"Here I Come To Save The Day"

Workouts at my trail running location can be interesting.  I've seen strange people standing motionless and staring vacantly into the woods.  I've seen hormone enraged teens stumbling back into the front seat when they see another car coming down the road.   And today, I saw two young lovers ... one of them broken-hearted and carrying a baseball bat ... just before a potentially disastrous ending.  Here's what happened ...

I was running my typical recovery trail run today after work at Lake Jacomo.  From about 200 yards away, I saw two parked cars, tucked in pretty close to the timberline at the end of a lane.   I thought to myself, "I've seen THIS before!" ... two people, who for some reason showed up in separate cars, wanted some "private time".  So I obliged and turned around and ran the other direction, hopefully undetected.

All of the sudden over my shoulder I hear a girl's voice shout, "Stop it! ... No! ... Stop it!"

Being the father of a young girl myself, and a concerned citizen, I stopped running and turned around to check it out.  At that point I literally saw a kid, probably about 18, with an metal baseball bat walking from one of the cars, presumably his, toward the other.  The young lady, probably late teens herself, was trying to resist him as he was pushing her to the side.  They were engaged in a little scuffle, but no punches were thrown or anything.  The guy acted like he was intent on getting to her car with the bat.

At that point, I of course started running toward them to try and stop him.  My heart immediately started racing and a million thoughts went through my head.  Most guys will know what I'm talking about when I tell you I instinctively started sizing him up, in case there was a physical altercation.  I needed to know how much of beat-down I was going to give or receive.  When I got closer, I could tell he was my size ... so no worries (wink).

Our brief but very intense conversation went like this ...

Me ... "Everything cool?"

Her ... "Um yeah, I'm fine ... thank you for checking."

Me ... "You don't look fine ... why don't you put the bat down bro?"

The young man just stares at me.

Her ... "Seriously, it's okay - thank you."

Me ... "Well, I could hear you scream from all the way over there, so dude - why don't you just put the bat down and everybody relax a little!"

The young man begins to walk toward his car where I was standing - I was starting to get a little concerned.

Me ... "Man, why don't you just take a few minutes to cool off ... maybe leave and come back.  You don't need to do anything with that bat?"

The young man was right in front of me now ... and a little taller than I thought - but nothing unmanageable.  He looked kinda like me when I was younger, with blondish hair and a few pimples.  He acted a little distant, but I really didn't feel like he was on anything, and his eyes were kinda glassy like he'd been crying.  

Him ... Sighing, almost in a whisper he says, "She's been cheating on me."

Me ... In a voice low enough so only he could hear, I responded, "Well, yeah - it's pretty obvious that's what this is ... but don't do something stupid and mess up your life.  If you bash her car in, that's gonna stay with you a long time."

Him ... Kinda defeated and maybe a little embarrassed, "I know."

Me ... "Look, I've got your license plate number man, so if you get out of hand I'm just gonna report it and the cops will find you in a matter of minutes, so why don't we all just go our separate ways, cool off and settle this later.  You got anybody you can talk to about this?"

Him ... "Yeah."

Me ... "Well, go find them and talk it out.  I know it hurts, but this isn't the way to handle it, man!"

Him ... "Okay."

Her ... "Thank you so much for coming over here ... everything's fine."

At this point he put the bat in his back seat and started to leave. The young lady started toward her car as well.  I also started walking back toward the place where my runs start, but made sure I kept my eye on the situation that was hopefully diffused.  I watched as they drove away in separate directions.  I never felt at all like the young girl was really in physical danger ... just her car.  I think he wanted to smash her windshield or something. 

Whew ... crisis avoided.  For Christmas, Michael got me a t-shirt from my favorite superhero ... The Flash,  so I've been feeling a little superheroish lately ... just flyin' around fighting crime!  But seriously I'm glad I was there.  Domestic violence is a very serious matter, regardless of the age of the people involved.  I really don't think the guy was going to harm her, but you never know when things get out of control.  Plus when he saw me, he backed down like a puppy. Who knows, maybe being caught in the act doing something stupid by an adult will make him think twice and get his anger under control before something like this happens again.  Anyway ... it was an interesting workout.  Other than that, the run went great!

... be great today!