Your Right To Feel Secure

Forty odd (and sometimes VERY odd) years ago, I lived over near Los Angeles City College, on a street you didn’t necessarily want to walk down alone at night. My girlfriend (and future wife) Toni and I were walking from our house down to the Seven-Eleven. I was training in Filipino Kali 3–4 times a week down in Torrence, and I’d begun to notice that as I got deeper and deeper into the practice, I started to perceive the world differently. When I looked at people, sometimes they were human…and sometimes they were like silhouettes painted on sheets of glass with all the vulnerable areas marked out in splotches of red paint. Strange.

That night, it got even stranger. So we’re walking down the street, maybe one o’clock in the morning. I’m talking to Toni…and suddenly, something touched me between the eyes. Between and “above” the eyes. Like a cold finger. I turned, and about fifty feet away, in the shadow of an alcove up ahead, there was a man. Watching us.

When he noticed we saw him, he stepped away from the wall and started walking ahead of us. Slowly. I did some rapid calculation, and realized that if we continued at the current speed, the gap between us would close, and we’d meet in a large, dark patch of shadows up ahead. I put my arm out to slow Toni down. The guy ahead of us slowed down. I slowed down more. He slowed down more. I stopped dead.

He stopped…took a look back over his shoulder at us…and then took off running around the corner.