When Life and Death Comes Home
I write a lot about life and death. I love life and contemplate death. I don't believe in easy solutions. I don't believe in heaven or hell, beyond that I have no idea.
I do believe in death, I do believe in pain. I suppose there are few who would disagree. I do believe in the anguished voice of my son when I tell him his father could have died. I believe in the concern of my wife or in the tormented tears of my father facing a reality that wasn't, but could have been. I believe in the power of a bullet to fly through the air imperceptibly fast, striking my flesh and sending my life into the chasm of universal question's without living answers.
It seems the philosophical side of myself predicates the story I must tell.
There are few times in life when one sees a possible moment of their exit from humanity. Of course there is the natural moment when the years and our bodies consume us. Still, there are other moments, disturbing moments that once they happen haunt us for the remainder of our lives. They are moments when we perhaps escaped or even cheated death. Moments when a single instant could have tipped the precarious balance on which we walk through life.
It was a sunny morning in the south. The air still steamy from the heat of the day before. I didn't have time to contemplate my existence, I simply wanted to make my way to my language class like I did everyday. My brain was filled with Thai words that I knew and wished I could remember as I pulled out into the daily line of traffic that consumes a four lane road that runs like an artery from my suburban town to downtown Columbia. It was a typical day, bumper to bumper cars moving slowly toward a distant traffic signal. A shiny read Toyota Tacoma pickup truck began to tail me pushing close and flashing his headlights. Riding my bumper he became increasingly aggressive.
"Why should I move over?" I thought. "I need to get into a left hand lane soon and there is a car in front of me. It's not like the guy is going to gain anything." I couldn't see his face, his lights consumed the rear window of my tiny Fiat 500. We came to a stop light and he was resting less than six inches behind my car when I decided I would tell the guy to back off. I opened my door and stepped out into the median of a road bumper to bumper with traffic. I had barely taken a single step when I looked up and saw the man fling his door open and standing behind it in a shooting posture with his arms extended he brandished a platinum colored 9mm hand gun. He was white, late 30's, shaven head. In short he looked like 50% of the males in the predominantly white southern suburb I called my home.
He seemed to be shaking slightly as he screamed something at me. Standing empty handed in my blue jeans and polo shirt I stared down the barrel of a pistol for the first time in my life. I was the slightest trigger pull away from life and death. For an instant my life was no longer my own. My fate was beyond my control. I can only wonder what the people in the cars around me were thinking. My heart raced. I hadn't said a word and was only able to muster "put down the fucking gun!" Before I turned and jumped back into the seat of my car. I pulled into the median and let him slide by before pulling in behind him to get his plate number.
Frantically I tried to remember how to call the highway patrol. I tried to take a picture with my phone, my lens distorted and image blocked by the rising sun penetrating my window and blinding my eyes. I called 911 and frantically told the operator that a man had pulled a gun on me in the middle of the highway. I screamed out landmark after landmark as I followed him waiting to see the flashing blue lights I thought might come to my rescue.
The man pulled into a parking lot outside a hospital and I blocked his exit. Police began to arrive. First hospital police, then county, then city. I was directed away from him and could only see his figure as a white police officer moved from me to him taking statements. A black hospital officer stood next to me. I could hear they sympathy in his voice as I explained what had happened. "It wasn't right was it I asked? I mean even if this was South Carolina."
The officer sighed and agreed, it just wasn't right yet I could tell he knew in his heart there was nothing that could be done. Eventually the investigating officer returned to explain that the man had a child in the car and felt threatened.
He felt threatened. Threatened from a 48 year old balding man in blue jeans with nothing in his hands driving a Fiat 500 Gucci edition. If anything he might have been threatened thinking I was gay long before I would ever do harm. After all, he was the one tailgating me? Nothing made sense. The officer said he would write a report. What did that mean? I asked. Would they take his gun at least? Would they do anything? The answer was no. You see it was my fault. I shouldn't have opened my door and stepped out of my car. If I had told them I thought he bumped my car it would have been different. If I had been in my car and he had pulled beside me and waved his gun, it would have been different.
This is the reality of life in a stand your ground state. The crazy people know the code words. They have been drilled into their heads by the NRA, by Fox News, by the right wing voices locked on their radios instructing them what to think, what to believe. They have been taught that all they need to say is "I felt threatened." Those three words were golden. Their mere utterance could justify anything. Even the killing of an unarmed man in the middle of a busy street standing only a foot from the door of his car.
I don't blame the officer. He is a victim of the laws he is given to enforce. That said I can't help but wonder what might have happened had that psychotic white man been black. I doubt it would have ended with simply "a report."
This is the reality of a nation where the voice of the citizen has been relegated to the dust bin of history. I have grown up believing in government. In democracy and representation. The last 15 years have progressively eaten away at my faith in that system. I no longer believe my voice means anything. I no longer have faith that my vote can change the world. I have been relegated into districts designed by their very nature to nullify my power. I live in a system where politicians no longer carry my banner into battle. They are only concerned with their own self preservation and the representation of money and power. After the murderous rampage at Sandy Hook when numerous children lay dead, the victims of guns in the hands of the insane 80% of Americans wanted stronger background checks. Eighty percent of Americans don't agree on anything yet they did on that simple request. Still those in power denied that request.
I have felt strongly my whole life about the power of weapons in the hands of the crazy. They are instruments of power. Extensions of the self to compensate the weak for their perceived inadequacy. They vault these scared little people from a position of subjugation to one of power and command.
Despite facing a moment of my potential demise. A moment where I leave my family and those I love behind to remember me for who I was not what I will be, I still do not contemplate owning a gun. I am too strong for that. Sadly the incident has simply scared my mind and left me wanting more than ever to leave the sickness of this nation behind me. I have spent my professional life working for this nation yet I see no gain. I only see things growing worse to the point where I am now an example of injustice I have spent my life trying to overcome.
I live in a society where I am told to not leave my car. Not stand on the side of a busy rode. Surrender to the fear of the unknown. Surrender to the man brandishing the fire arm. After all, it is he who has the power in this nation of 270 million, not I. I am simply one. Sadly, the next time I will surrender. I will think of my wife, of my father, of my child. I will stay in my seat. I will lock my doors and I will cower in fear.
It has taken me days to write this story. Words that usually dance from my mind to my fingers seem to come so slowly. When I close my eyes I still see the barrel of that gun pointing at my face, at my heart. I still see the loss of all that I have ever been and ever will be.
I do believe in death, I do believe in pain. I suppose there are few who would disagree. I do believe in the anguished voice of my son when I tell him his father could have died. I believe in the concern of my wife or in the tormented tears of my father facing a reality that wasn't, but could have been. I believe in the power of a bullet to fly through the air imperceptibly fast, striking my flesh and sending my life into the chasm of universal question's without living answers.
It seems the philosophical side of myself predicates the story I must tell.
There are few times in life when one sees a possible moment of their exit from humanity. Of course there is the natural moment when the years and our bodies consume us. Still, there are other moments, disturbing moments that once they happen haunt us for the remainder of our lives. They are moments when we perhaps escaped or even cheated death. Moments when a single instant could have tipped the precarious balance on which we walk through life.
It was a sunny morning in the south. The air still steamy from the heat of the day before. I didn't have time to contemplate my existence, I simply wanted to make my way to my language class like I did everyday. My brain was filled with Thai words that I knew and wished I could remember as I pulled out into the daily line of traffic that consumes a four lane road that runs like an artery from my suburban town to downtown Columbia. It was a typical day, bumper to bumper cars moving slowly toward a distant traffic signal. A shiny read Toyota Tacoma pickup truck began to tail me pushing close and flashing his headlights. Riding my bumper he became increasingly aggressive.
"Why should I move over?" I thought. "I need to get into a left hand lane soon and there is a car in front of me. It's not like the guy is going to gain anything." I couldn't see his face, his lights consumed the rear window of my tiny Fiat 500. We came to a stop light and he was resting less than six inches behind my car when I decided I would tell the guy to back off. I opened my door and stepped out into the median of a road bumper to bumper with traffic. I had barely taken a single step when I looked up and saw the man fling his door open and standing behind it in a shooting posture with his arms extended he brandished a platinum colored 9mm hand gun. He was white, late 30's, shaven head. In short he looked like 50% of the males in the predominantly white southern suburb I called my home.
He seemed to be shaking slightly as he screamed something at me. Standing empty handed in my blue jeans and polo shirt I stared down the barrel of a pistol for the first time in my life. I was the slightest trigger pull away from life and death. For an instant my life was no longer my own. My fate was beyond my control. I can only wonder what the people in the cars around me were thinking. My heart raced. I hadn't said a word and was only able to muster "put down the fucking gun!" Before I turned and jumped back into the seat of my car. I pulled into the median and let him slide by before pulling in behind him to get his plate number.
The man pulled into a parking lot outside a hospital and I blocked his exit. Police began to arrive. First hospital police, then county, then city. I was directed away from him and could only see his figure as a white police officer moved from me to him taking statements. A black hospital officer stood next to me. I could hear they sympathy in his voice as I explained what had happened. "It wasn't right was it I asked? I mean even if this was South Carolina."
The officer sighed and agreed, it just wasn't right yet I could tell he knew in his heart there was nothing that could be done. Eventually the investigating officer returned to explain that the man had a child in the car and felt threatened.
He felt threatened. Threatened from a 48 year old balding man in blue jeans with nothing in his hands driving a Fiat 500 Gucci edition. If anything he might have been threatened thinking I was gay long before I would ever do harm. After all, he was the one tailgating me? Nothing made sense. The officer said he would write a report. What did that mean? I asked. Would they take his gun at least? Would they do anything? The answer was no. You see it was my fault. I shouldn't have opened my door and stepped out of my car. If I had told them I thought he bumped my car it would have been different. If I had been in my car and he had pulled beside me and waved his gun, it would have been different.
This is the reality of life in a stand your ground state. The crazy people know the code words. They have been drilled into their heads by the NRA, by Fox News, by the right wing voices locked on their radios instructing them what to think, what to believe. They have been taught that all they need to say is "I felt threatened." Those three words were golden. Their mere utterance could justify anything. Even the killing of an unarmed man in the middle of a busy street standing only a foot from the door of his car.
I don't blame the officer. He is a victim of the laws he is given to enforce. That said I can't help but wonder what might have happened had that psychotic white man been black. I doubt it would have ended with simply "a report."
This is the reality of a nation where the voice of the citizen has been relegated to the dust bin of history. I have grown up believing in government. In democracy and representation. The last 15 years have progressively eaten away at my faith in that system. I no longer believe my voice means anything. I no longer have faith that my vote can change the world. I have been relegated into districts designed by their very nature to nullify my power. I live in a system where politicians no longer carry my banner into battle. They are only concerned with their own self preservation and the representation of money and power. After the murderous rampage at Sandy Hook when numerous children lay dead, the victims of guns in the hands of the insane 80% of Americans wanted stronger background checks. Eighty percent of Americans don't agree on anything yet they did on that simple request. Still those in power denied that request.
I have felt strongly my whole life about the power of weapons in the hands of the crazy. They are instruments of power. Extensions of the self to compensate the weak for their perceived inadequacy. They vault these scared little people from a position of subjugation to one of power and command.
Despite facing a moment of my potential demise. A moment where I leave my family and those I love behind to remember me for who I was not what I will be, I still do not contemplate owning a gun. I am too strong for that. Sadly the incident has simply scared my mind and left me wanting more than ever to leave the sickness of this nation behind me. I have spent my professional life working for this nation yet I see no gain. I only see things growing worse to the point where I am now an example of injustice I have spent my life trying to overcome.
I live in a society where I am told to not leave my car. Not stand on the side of a busy rode. Surrender to the fear of the unknown. Surrender to the man brandishing the fire arm. After all, it is he who has the power in this nation of 270 million, not I. I am simply one. Sadly, the next time I will surrender. I will think of my wife, of my father, of my child. I will stay in my seat. I will lock my doors and I will cower in fear.
It has taken me days to write this story. Words that usually dance from my mind to my fingers seem to come so slowly. When I close my eyes I still see the barrel of that gun pointing at my face, at my heart. I still see the loss of all that I have ever been and ever will be.
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