Blind Luck (Part 3)

    An old saying goes: you have to be good to be lucky.  Am I good or bad?  That is a question I have
pondered for a lifetime.  If you ask Ma, I have never been good, always a troublemaker, always the truthsayer to the dismay of the entire close-lipped family, always a big mouth.  I must admit, I do have a big mouth.  It has gotten me into trouble, but it has also saved my life.

     It saved me from being taken across state lines 31years ago when I told my abductor, with the big knives, that I couldn’t go with him to Wisconsin because I had a final exam the next day.  He actually laughed and released me a short time later on a quiet residential street, leaving me to go home to an angry mother who couldn’t believe I had let the man take her car.

                  But I’m safe, Ma.  I got away from him unharmed.
                 “Yeah, I can see that.  But you let him take my car!”

     Thirty-one years after that fateful incident, my big mouth came in handy again.  I should have seen it coming, considering the practice I have had with crazy abductors.  He had been casing my store.  That is what a neighboring merchant told the police.  Why, pray tell, did they never call the police with this information?

     Someone should have told this goon a lingerie boutique is not a cash business, although that day I had a large cash sale in the drawer; it was the luck of the draw that he chose that particular day to visit me and prove his manhood.

Why the hairs on the back of my neck stayed flat against the nape, why my stomach didn’t turn over a few times, why my fight or flight instinct didn’t announce itself that afternoon, I will never know.  Maybe it was the 31 years in between my un-luck that slowed my memory; maybe the many years of living: school, illnesses, debilitating depression —was that actually a breakdown I had?—crazy loon family, two kids, close call on the marriage ending, two parents dead and one thieving sister stealing the inheritance; maybe these and more were enough to dull the memory and the connection awful experiences have to the gut, making it extremely sensitive to pretty much everything; maybe this was enough to slow down the synapses connecting the — hmmm, why is this customer giving me such a hard time?—experiential induced warning,  with the— you better get the fuck outta here—reality that you are now entering a soon-to-be crime scene.

     That is why I was so mad at myself when he quietly said, “I’m going to rob you.  I have a gun.”  After all the honing of the past 31 years, I should have seen the small details; the tiny beads of swear gathering on his forehead, the canvassing of the entire store, eyes scanning the dressing rooms, the nooks and crannies for signs of life, the barrage of inane questions.  I kicked myself later for succumbing to his last question and finding myself in the back corner, the blind spot of the store.  (Just thinking about the blind spot brings my hand to the back of my head for a big whack!) So clueless was I to the obvious, that my response to his quiet utterance of intention was, Say what?
He grabbed my arm hard.
               “I have a gun.  Tell me how to get into the cash register.”

      I stepped out of the present and found myself operating out of the 18-year-old mind from the Walgreen’s parking lot, staring at my horror in the reflection of a seven inch blade; it’s funny how you can calmly watch yourself in present and past simultaneously and it not seem odd that you are now speaking from the view a brand new persona, just birthed out of chaos.

       The lone alarm button was under the register and I was on the opposite side of the store.
        You can’t get into the register.  There is a special code for access.
       “Give it to me.”
        You won’t be able to get in.  Only I can get into the register.

...to be continued......