The Day I Learned to Trust My Intuition...
was the day I got kidnapped
I’m a Feeler
When I was about eleven years old, I learned one of my greatest lessons-intuition is not something to be ignored. One evening, my mom asked me to walk with her to the store. She was a single mom at the time and couldn’t drive because of her lack of vision, so walking was often our form of transportation.
When we arrived at the store, we saw a very odd man. The moment I locked eyes on him, the hair on my arms stood straight up. That had never happened to me before. I instantly knew that something was wrong. I couldn’t explain it, but everything inside of me told me that something was not right. Years later, I would discover a word for this-empath. I told my mom that the man made me uncomfortable. She initially shrugged it off. As we strolled down the aisles, the man was always just a few feet away from us, always within eyesight. I reiterated my discomfort to my mom, and this time, she paid closer attention.
I told her that I was not leaving the store with this guy around. As we approached the checkout lane, my mom told me to walk towards the door and yell back to her that Dad was waiting outside for us. In reality, my dad wasn’t even around at the time, but my mom thought it was a good idea for the man to believe that we had a man waiting for us to exit the store. After that announcement, the odd man left. I watched him get into his truck and drive off. It was the first time since entering the store that my breathing normalized. We finished ringing up our items and got ready to head home.
As we left the store, we took a shortcut home, which had us walk down an alley. I have no idea why that seemed like a good idea, but it was cold outside, and Minnesota winters can be horrendous, so I’m assuming we just wanted to hurry up and get home. The alley we were walking down split in the center and became a T. A person coming down the alley could either continue straight or turn midway through to go down the T. As we’re walking my mom and I are randomly talking.
I remember looking at her and saying, “All I know is if I see a truck, I AM OUT.” As soon as I said the words, bright headlights appeared, and a truck came right at us. Fight or flight kicked in with a mixture of panic, and my mom ran up the T, and I ran down it. I found an industrial-sized garbage can, and I went behind it. It was up on four wheels, though, and I kept thinking, “Oh God, if he looks under, he will see me.”
I did the only thing I could think of. I put my feet up on the garbage can and I put my hands on the fence behind me. I hoisted myself, and I held my breath. At this point, odd man had gotten out of the truck. I could hear him crunching in the snow and getting closer. I glanced over my shoulder and wondered if I could quickly flip over the fence and return to the store for help. I decided I probably wouldn’t have enough time to make it over before he grabbed me. I knew he was close I could still hear him crunching and I also heard him breathing on the other side of the garbage can. I had never been so scared in my life.
The crunching grew quieter, and I could tell he was retreating. I was shaking profusely, holding on to the fence and the garbage can and I was terrified he was going to hear me. I heard the sound of his door opening and close, and his truck slowly pulled off. I waited for what seemed like forever until it was silent. I hopped down from the garbage can and screamed for my mom. I heard her yell back, and as I ran toward her voice, odd man flipped his lights on and hit the gas, backing out of a driveway. He had pulled in and shut his lights off to hide. He flung his door open and grabbed me. I screamed and thrashed, trying to get out of his grasp. He’s driving and dragging me, and I know how this ends. I die. If he gets me in his truck, I die.
The next thing I know I am being pulled with a superhuman amount of force from the other side. My blind-ass momma came from out of nowhere to my rescue and pulled us both to safety. She than proceeded to move faster than my legs could carry me, to be clear she dragged the hell out of me. We exit the alley to the actual street and we approach a house. Back then, McGruff safe houses were plentiful, so I assumed that’s where we were heading. My mom threw open the porch door of a random house, and literally, Chuck Norris karate-kicked the main door in. She screamed at the top of her lungs, “Help us! Call the police.”
As we sat there waiting for the police with the people we had just scared the life out of, I glanced at my mom and realized she was still holding the groceries. I was mind-blown. How the hell did she manage that? I sat watching her, trying to calm my heart rate. Finally, I was able to speak, “Mom, you still have the groceries.” Without even missing a beat, she replied, “ Yeah, because I still have hungry babies at home.”
This essay was originally published in Empathy and Eyebrows.