even if you’re not near a capitol this week

On Fri­day one of our lo­cal flom­mists was in­volved in an al­ter­ca­tion at Target.

A rather reck­less dose of “I have to do some­thing here” as well as years of foot­ball prac­tice came in handy.

Af­ter send­ing me his re­cap (be­low), we chat­ted about Sacra­men­to right now, in­stincts, ba­sic safe­ty (don’t try this at home, un­less you re­al­ly have to!), adren­a­line and deesca­la­tion – the lat­ter has be­come com­mon­place for me when I teach in a phys­i­cal classroom. 

And self care: Mem­o­ries are go­ing to be with him for a while …

 

Fri­day af­ter­noon at Target.

While I was in the self check­out, there was this Trumper be­ing es­cort­ed out. He was maybe late 30s, 6″ tall, around 200lbs., cau­casian, wear­ing a black hood­ie, black back­pack and a MAGA hat. He was scream­ing, “I HOPE THEY ALL COME IN HERE AND SHOOT YOU ALL!” and cussing out ran­dom peo­ple for wear­ing masks.

Fi­nal­ly, he was led outside.

I walked to my car, which was on the oth­er side of the lot and was about to light a smoke and dri­ve away when I saw him walk­ing back to­wards Target.

I thought, oh fuk. Some­things go­ing down.

So I put out my smoke, threw my mask back on, got out of the car and start­ed walk­ing be­hind him, like, 50 yards away.

At this dis­tance I see him head to the Tar­get en­trance and a ran­dom woman in maybe her late 40s walks out push­ing her cart. She turns away from him to head to her car. There are also a few dozen oth­er cus­tomers and a few em­ploy­ees push­ing carts lin­ger­ing around also.

As she is walk­ing away, the man charges her and punch­es her across the back of the head with his fist and drink.

She turns and screams “why did you do that!?” cov­ered in soda or smooth­ie or whatever.

Every­one gasps but does noth­ing and the man be­gins to walk away in my direction.

The woman is kneel­ing in the park­ing lot hold­ing the back of her head, sobbing.

The man looks at me and no one is do­ing any­thing, only a cou­ple peo­ple mak­ing sure she is okay.

My eyes go red. And I charged di­rect­ly at him. As I got close, he winds up to punch me but I ducked un­der and lift­ed him off the ground and slammed his back into the brick wall, bruis­ing my own hand and shoul­der. He writhes for a minute as I wres­tle him around and pin his face to the wall.

I didn’t know what else to do. It was like I was out-of-body, I just responded.

The man­ag­er rush­es out as every­one is watch­ing this hap­pen. I let him down as he is re­signed now.

I tell the man­ag­er what hap­pened and the woman con­firms. She is shak­en and sore, but okay. Every­one just gasps but end­ed up just go­ing about their busi­ness, mi­nus the two who checked on her.

I then left him to man­age­ment. The cops came and I drove away.

Since Fri­day, I’m find­ing my mind will wan­der and when I look up or awak­en from thought, my body goes into shock and pan­ic mode be­cause I ac­tu­al­ly feel like I am in a place that I am not.

It’s like I time trav­el, and when my con­scious­ness awakes it’s a surge of mem­o­ries that rush through me and jolt me back to present.

I met with my ther­a­pist on Sun­day and we talked about the in­ci­dent and how I re­act­ed – I didn’t even think of my per­son­al safe­ty and just re­spond­ed. It’s like old­er broth­er kicked in sub­con­scious­ly and all that mat­tered was mak­ing things safe, every­thing else was a blur.

My body hurts every­where. And I am nev­er shocked at people’s com­pla­cen­cy dur­ing such actions.

All I can say right now is stay safe.

—anon w/mask in sactown

 

—steve mehal­lo

Flom­mist Steve Mehal­lo is a graph­ic de­sign­er, il­lus­tra­tor, font de­sign­er, ed­u­ca­tor, food­ie and gad­fly. He is the cre­ator and founder of FLOMM!

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