When my brother and I were pretty young, my dad once left us in the car to run in fast and grab something from a grocery store. (I know, bad, but this was several decades ago. It was more normal back then.)
While he was gone, an older man came up to our car and started aggressively trying to unlock the door.
My brother and I froze in fear and just watched as he kept trying to unlock the door. We had unbuckled ourselves to play while my dad was inside, so we were on the floor.
We both just shrunk down into the floor and hid silently, not knowing what to do.
After probably 30 seconds, he put his hands up over his eyes and looked in the car window, then made a frustrated sound and quickly left.
Once our dad came back a few minutes later, my brother and I told him what happened. We were pretty freaked out.
He said the man was probably just confused because he was elderly and thought it was his car. I think that makes sense, but as little kids alone, it was still really scary.
my dad once left us in the car to run in fast and grab something from a grocery store. (I know, bad
Is this bad? Where? My parents often left us in the car, it's totally normal here in Denmark.
I'm in the US and we lived in a medium-sized city at the time, so a higher level of danger than in many other developed countries.
It's a bit flexible nowadays because a lot of cars will let you leave the a/c on while you walk away with the keys.
True, I guess it varies depending on where you live and the circumstances.
A patient came into the ER for chest pain. He was uncomfortable and a bit anxious but otherwise normal. The guy was a military officer and very athletic. I go in to draw his blood and get some background information, we're chatting as I get my supplies ready, and as I'm putting the needle in his arm he says "you're from the government." in a very cold voice. I look up and his face has completely changed. He's furious and looks like a cornered animal. Before I can ask "what?", he screams it again and rips the needle out of his arm. He kicked me backward and then stood up while screaming "you're from the government" repeatedly. I get to my feet and he charges, easily twice my size and probably trained to kill. I run to the far end of the ward, he keeps running after me, and the only thing that saved me was having my paramedic boots on. I managed to get one good kick with the steel toe into his shin and brought him down after which I got him into a restraint position and the doc sedated him. I had never seen psychosis suddenly come on like that from a completely neurotypical presentation. A switch flipped mid-conversation and he was determined to kill me without any ability to perceive pain or limit the strength of his muscles. I broke his leg and he was unaffected, still trying to get up and attack me again.
Pretty much. What got me is that he was an aviation officer with a pretty high rank. They have extremely strict entry requirements, regular psychological screenings, constant checks by flight surgeons. He was around 20 years beyond when a lot of psychiatric illnesses start presenting and as far as I know we never established an etiology for it. The only trigger I could ever think of was the needle piercing him but until that moment he showed absolutely no anxiety about the blood draw and I thoroughly explained why we were drawing two separate chest panels over the next few hours. One moment he fully understood what was happening and was discussing it, the next it was chaos. After really fine-tuning my sense of shit about to kick off from that line of work, I had zero indication anything was off about the situation.
Most mental illnesses disqualify you from flying so many pilots never seek help under any circumstances as they want to keep flying. The phrase between pilots is "the three most important people in your life are your doctor, your priest and your areomedical examiner. It is critical to ensure they never meet". Or could be a product of trying to hide illness for a while so he could keep his job and pride.
A stranger trying to grab me by the back of my neck as I rode past on my bicycle. He got ahold of my hoodie but didn't have a good grip. I got away and pedalled like hell.
I don’t know the whole situation but reading this it could be he just happened to go the same way and maybe whistled because he wanted to make himself noticed by animals. But it sure seems creepy!
I was out in the garden when a dude waked by. One of us waved, I don’t remember which, and the other waved back, sort of neighborly one hand up for a second wave. By the time he crosses the bush, he has turned back to cross my (luckily fairly large) yard, walking towards me. I run inside, and lock the door and yell at my SO to come downstairs there was a scary man at the door. SO confronts the man while I hide. Dude makes up a story about how someone yelled at him from our balcony, and he thought it was his friend. SO says he doesn’t believe him, and he better not show his face around here again if he wants to make it home alive.
I can’t read this thread. I have a few scraps left of faith in humanity I’d like to retain.
