{"id":7760,"date":"2015-09-28T20:08:52","date_gmt":"2015-09-29T04:08:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/?p=7760"},"modified":"2021-09-28T20:57:22","modified_gmt":"2021-09-29T03:57:22","slug":"have-a-seat-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/?p=7760","title":{"rendered":"Have a Seat"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a restricted entry of several months ago<\/a>, I briefly mentioned an episode (about fifteen years ago) in which someone attempted to kill me. On Tuesday of last week, I was telling the story more fully to my neighbors Claudia and Ren.<\/p>

At the time of the attack, I was very frustrated and upset with what was happening in my life, and had elevated levels of adrenaline and of cortisol. That may have saved my life.<\/p>

As I sat in a lounge, I was approached by a very large fellow; he was well over six feet tall, and well over 200 pounds. (By comparison, I'm about 5 ft<\/abbr> 10 in<\/abbr> and I probably weighed something less that 150 pounds.) He told me that I were telepathically disrupting his thoughts<\/em>.<\/p>

I grimly noted to myself that here was one more thing gone wrong. Then, aware of the underlying humor but expressing myself in a serious manner, I asked Would it help if I moved to the other side of the room?<\/q><\/p>

His reply was No, but I think I know what would.<\/q><\/p>

What?<\/q><\/p>

If I killed you.<\/q> He lifted a chair with which to strike me.<\/p>

I shot to my feet, and grabbed the chair by a cross-piece. He found that he couldn't much move it — which was because my body was so wired<\/em>. (I was holding it with just one hand, keeping the other immediately free; but, with what was in my blood-stream, one hand was enough.)<\/p>

Thwarted, he listened as I tried reasoning with him, and I talked him out of trying to kill me.<\/p>

Claudia wanted to know what I'd said to him. After all these years, I simply don't remember.<\/p>

She also asserted that my reäction was unusual; that most other people would have attempted to shield themselves with their arms while cowering in their seats. Until she made that assertion, I'd not thought about that point; but I believe that she's right. A typical person would probably have done that, perhaps crying for help or for mercy. Had I done that, I would have had my arms fractured and my head injured; I might have been killed.<\/p>

But, as far as I can recall, none of the typical response occurred to me; I didn't even consider<\/em> doing those things. I don't think that I calculated that such a reäction would fail; I just didn't give thought to responding in that way. (After I had hold of the chair, I considered calling for help, but decided to bring the situation under control without assistance.)<\/p>

So, after Claudia's assertion, the scientist in me asked why not. The best answer that I have is that my actual reäction was implicit in my ethos<\/span>. While I'd never given conscious thought to the question of what my childhood rôle models would do in a situation such as that, and didn't ask myself in that moment, I was responding much as any one of them would. Curt Newton<\/a> would have grabbed the chair; Solomon Kane<\/a> would have grabbed the chair.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In a restricted entry of several months ago, I briefly mentioned an episode (about fifteen years ago) in which someone attempted to kill me. On Tuesday of last week, I was telling the story more fully to my neighbors Claudia and Ren. Claudia wanted to know what I'd said to him. After all these years, […]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,42,5,4],"tags":[1358,1355,1359,1360,1356,642,1357],"class_list":["post-7760","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary","category-earthquakes","category-personal","category-public","tag-assault","tag-curt-newton","tag-defense","tag-ethoi","tag-role-models","tag-solomon-kane","tag-survival"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7760","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7760"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7760\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11827,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7760\/revisions\/11827"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7760"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7760"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7760"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}