Last weekend I saw something wierd and horrible

Last weeekend I saw something wierd and horrible.

I was in my car, waiting at a robot for the light to change. A gogo was crossing the road on foot. I noticed she was looking behind her. As she got to the other side of the road, a young guy (maybe 17-20) came walking behind her, carrying a wooden pole. As he got closer to her he started to run. He jumped in the air (it was like a kung fu movie - the run continues but starts to be vertical) and KICKED her in the chest. She fell down, all the cars started hooting, he just turned (cool as) and walked back the way he had come. The old lady was ok, she stood up and said "that boy hit me for nothing".

The lights changed and all us whities in cars just drove off.

What do you do? Sometimes things happen so fast. And to be totally honest, as horrified as I was, I was also terrified. I thought about driving into the guy, but even in my car I was scared of him. A pole versus a car? Surely I would have won that fight (at least physically if not morally or legally) if I had it in me?

It made me think of something that happened to me a few years ago. I was walking through town to work. I was going thorugh a small alley in a parkade when I saw a man in an wheelchair coming towards me. I smiled at him and stepped to the side to let the wheelchair pass. But instead of passing me - he lunged towards me, put his hand up my dress (thankfully I was wearing trousers underneath)and said some inanity along the lines of "hey babe". If you are like everyone else I know, you will have laughed at that. Well, I can laugh now too, but at the time I was pretty shaken up. Whenever I tell this story, I have to point out that just because he was in a wheel chair, doesn't mean it was less of a violation of my personal space.

But the reason the events are linked in my mind is that at that moment I felt exactly the same loss of agency, the same powerlessness, the same fear. In both cases I was most likely in a physically stronger position, but somehow could not react.

In the case of the guy in the wheelchair, I'm pretty sure that was what he was aiming for. Being disabled must be a very emasculating situation. He probably feels quite helpless much of the time. I'm sure his asserting himself at me like that was an attempt to regain power by feeling like the aggressor, the dominant individual in the interaction.

But the guy with the stick - he just knew that the chances of anyone reacting (quickly and on behalf of a stranger) were slim. And he was right.

Fight or flight - for me it seems 'deer in the headlights' is the instinctive positon. Is 'freeze' evolutionary or learned? Either way, it sucks.