A Gift of Fear. At six years old I had my first experience with bad people, unbeknownst to me at that time, this was my first encounter into self-defence.
It could have gone horribly wrong, but fortunately for me it didn’t. Gavin de Becker wrote about it many years later in “The Gift of Fear”- survival signals that protect us from violence. On this eventful day, I was six years old and living in Hillbrow, Johannesburg. As I recall, I was accompanied by a nanny to the local park, who gave me strict instructions not to leave the boundary of the park. My parents had divorced, with the result that my father was working overseas, so was very pleased to have received a parcel of “Matchbox” replica miniature cars as a gift. To a six-year-old this was his entire universe; a set of toy cars from his father.
Once at the park, as any child would, I made a bee-line to the playground slide and immediately set up a game where my collection of toy cars was released from the top of the slide into the sandpit at the bottom of the run, I would follow the speeding cars by sliding to the bottom to retrieve my cars and run round to the access ladder to resume this joyous cycle. After a while, I noticed an elderly teenager watching me play, some time passed and he interjected by saying that the game would be far easier if he passed the cars to me at the top of the slide. I can still recall my sensation, there was an uneasiness about this situation which I could not understand but the instinct was there. I reluctantly agreed – how could a six-year-old argue with an elderly teenager? After watching several loops of this game (obviously trying to win my confidence), he, on the completion of the descend of all the cars, quickly collected them and put them into his pockets. He ran out of the park and disappeared from sight.
My whole world stopped right there – I can still remember the guttural cry of anguish – toy cars to a six-year-old being a prized possession. I slid down in the futile attempt to offer chase and some hopeless chance of retrieval, I ran to where the teenager had exited the park and stopped at the boundary. At that moment the doors of a sedan car with tinted windows opened up and an elderly male and female couple got out and told me to come with them as they recognized the teenager and knew where he lived and I should get into the car in order to retrieve my toy cars. An intuition swept in as mentioned in the book by Gavin de Becker, as the couple insisted; first sweetly and coaxingly and then when I slowly started backing away, their demeanour changed to one of vociferous shouting. They attempted to grab me as I further backed away from the short fence. And then it was all over as quickly as it began. They got back into the car, slamming doors and then sped off. I still remember the screeching tyres and the tinted windows as the car left. And I knew something bad had nearly happened.
I don’t remember the rest; I don’t remember getting home, I don’t remember what happened after that.
How did they know that my toy cars had been stolen? Who were they? What would have happened to me if I was forced into the car?
What I do know is that my intuition saved me.