Look At Me With Your Good Eye

Scanning

I received a note last night from a friend about a life threatening experience in her own front yard.  She had pulled up in the driveway, looked away for a second, and the next thing she knew, her door was pulled open, and a gun was in her face.  She was carjacked and robbed in her own driveway.  Luckily, she was not hurt.

Without I fail, I see at least one person a day fumbling with a cell phone and texting while walking, or a woman rummaging through her purse with her head down and not watching where she is going.  There is also the man digging through his messenger bag for who knows what, but my favorite is the person texting and walking across a street without even looking for traffic.  I guess they never took physics in school.  In the game of Car versus Pedestrian, car wins 100% of the time.  If your head is down, then you are distracted and not paying attention to your surroundings. 

I have seven degrees of black belt and am very good at self defense, have a gun permit (and do carry a pistol occasionally), and always carry a knife, but paying attention is still the best tool I have for personal protection.  I am not paranoid.  I just pay attention.  If I can avoid a situation rather than react to one, I am so much better off.  When I walk out of a store, I first look both ways for traffic, scan the area to look for things unusual or people loitering, and then scan around my truck.  Intuition is a great internal security system.  If something looks or feels off to me then it probably is so I wait for a few minutes. 

With the holiday season approaching, attention and awareness become even more important.  There are undesirables out there just waiting for the chance to steal your purse, take you packages on the way to the car, or who knows what else.  Most every interview with someone that was robbed or carjacked starts the same way, “I never saw them, or I was getting my keys out of my purse.”  Scanning your space and surroundings only takes seconds.  Practice awareness rather than becoming a statistic. 

Rodney - Scanning Far and Wide