Have you thought about what you'd do if confronted with an active shooter?

[ancianita]

220. Holy shit. I can't believe you've brought this up. I was held up at gunpoint last week.

It was behind my house. I was about to have a smoke in my husband's Prius when two kids who I'd watched just walking down our private street just tapped on the window, asking if I had a lighter. I opened the door, saying "Sure!"and handed the tall, skinny one my lighter. He turned to the fat kid and said, "Get it." The fat kid, who I thought was reaching across his jacket to get a pack of cigs out of his pocket, suddenly pointed an automatic at me. The tall skinny kid ordered me out of the car, demanding my keys.

I'm all like, "Oh come on, seriously? You don't have to this..."

"Gimme your keys..."

Raising my hands up in a shrug, "I don't have any."

"You're lying gimme the keys."

"Really I don't have any my husband just opens the car so I can come out and smoke whenever... I'm just an old lady having a smoke, please don't do this to people I'm a teacher in the area..." just talking and talking.

As soon as I said I'm a teacher in the area, they looked at each other and turned to walk away.

I said, as they were walking, "Can I have my lighter back?"

And you know what? The tall skinny kid who'd done all the talking gave me my lighter back! I kept a safe distance as they moved out of sight, pulling out my iphone and calling the university police near us. Within 15 minutes they had pulled the two off a bus, came back, picked me up to make an ID, and the rest is detective interviews, signing charges and now I'm on my way to two trials. The skinny kid is charged as an adult and the fat kid with the gun is charged as a juvenile with "Aggravated assault with intent to hijack a motor vehicle," with each being additionally charged with "Illegal possession of a firearm." The officer who took the gun off the fat kid later told me that it was a 40 mm glock -- loaded. I knew it was an automatic because I was staring at it the whole time I was talking to them. But even after he pointed out the reality of the danger, I still wasn't shaken. I signed the charges delivered from the states attorneys' office at 12 midnight that same night. The 17 year-old skinny kid, charged as an adult, is still in jail on a $75,000 bond,and the fat kid, charged as a juvenile, is still in juvenile detention.

I still am not sure how I did it, or why I kept running my mouth. But they were high school kids, and since I've taught high school kids for 34 years, I must have just talked to them the way I'd have talked to kids doing something kinda stupid. Or maybe they just didn't want to touch me and go through my pockets. I lied. I did have the car keys. The officers and detectives have marvelled about it, and I myself still haven't had any PTSD over it. So, all I can say is, one never really knows how one might react. The police told me that in the hundreds of similar cases, almost all people just quickly empty their pockets, piss their pants and freeze.

There's a lot more but that's the gist of how I was held up and beat down a bad thing. It could have gone some other way, but I'll never know.