Trust Your Gut Episode 2: Dirt Sky Dirt Sky

I race rally cars. Fast. On open roads in various countries with very dangerous roadways. My driver (I'm the navigator) and I both know the risks and realize that every race we begin may be our last. 

Day 3 of a 3-day race and we were going to be driving down very twisty roads hugging the walls of a canyon and then back up again. Obviously, this is a full race car situation with a roll cage and helmets and HANS devices and window nets and 5-point harnesses and whatnot. Some people also use arm restraints. I've never liked them because they make it hard to turn the pages of the route book.

I have arm restraints and I keep them in my gear bag but I never use them. Right before we started the speed stage I thought, "You know...I wish I'd brought my arm restraints. Better safe than sorry, right?" But I didn't, so...

So, of course, the last speed stage before service, we rolled the car. Hit some gravel on a very tight turn, and my driver instinctually decided to slam us into a boulder on the cliff wall side at 75mph instead of trying to correct which wouldn't have worked out well, I'm sure, and tossing us off the road and into the canyon. Even with our safety equipment, it's likely we would not have survived. I mean, we wouldn't have.

As soon as I realized what was happening, I tucked my arms in between my body and my aluminum race seat as far back as I could, which is probably what kept my arms from flailing around and hitting the ground and rocks, even through the netting. Arm restraints may have helped but maybe not, since I would have had them extended out further so I could hold the book. 

If I'd had them with me, would I have put them on? Yes. Did I end up needing them? Yes. How I managed to find a solution to keep my arms safe in a split second is beyond me, besides that fact that I'd played out all of the possible scenarios in my head over and over during the several years we've done this race, so I kinda knew what to do without thinking.

This one turned out okay. Next time, it might not. But what I will say is that there are a few speed stages where I think I'll be wearing those arm restraints no matter what from here on out. Scared? Hell, no. We're already preparing for a race in October if the driver's back is stable enough and gets clearance from the doctor to race. If not, I guess we'll wait until next April. I can't imagine them banning him from racing ever again. Many of our friends have gone through way worse and got back in a race car pretty quickly.

Trust your gut. It could save you from serious injury in a case like this. I got lucky but will never make the mistake again of leaving out a piece of safety gear due to its slight inconvenience. I'll make it work.

My x-rays show I am...
 

Trust Your Gut Episode 1: Come on In

(i'm dead set on getting a series of something going on here. i swear i'll succeed)

You hear from all sorts of random sources, "Always trust your gut instinct!" If you're like me, a lot of times your gut tells you something, you ignore it and pass it off to paranoia, but then something happens after all.

This is a story about one time I listened to my gut and I'm not even a little doubtful that, by doing so, I prevented a very traumatic situation from happening to me. I was probably 11 or 12 at the time.

I've been hunting with my dad since I was just a little Stillie. It wasn't about trophies; it was about putting meat in the freezer and food on our table. Plus, it was a good time to bond with him.

Usually, we would lease land along with some other people as a group, and there was always a mobile home or ancient single-wide trailer there for us all to use. It was good for the ranch owner and good for us. A symbiotic relationship, if you will. There was always an aerial map of the land inside the trailer and each day, the hunters would choose which area they wanted to hunt in, mark it, and then bs around until it was time to go out.

Usually all the people in the group were good friends but, sometimes, it was a friend-of-a-friend situation, as it was this year. There were two guys - father and adult son - we didn't know very well. And the son...he gave me the creeps. It wasn't just the way he looked at me. It was his smile, his body language, the way he asked me so many questions. I just knew something was off.

On this day, one of our group, Tony, had borrowed a friend's tow camper and brought it up. He said he was tired of fighting people for the one shower in the mobile home. Dad and I were checking it out but then I had to pee, so I went inside the home to go to the bathroom. 

I turned the handle a couple of times (it frequently got stuck) and it popped open a little. Then I heard some splashing and thumping, so I apologized to the occupant - it was obvious they were in the tub - and turned to walk off. The voice from inside the bathroom, I'll call him Danny, called out and said, "You don't need to go." I heard some more splashing. "If you need to use the bathroom, come on in, it's okay. I just shut the curtain." More splashing came from within.

I panicked. I really had to pee. On one hand, I'd always been treated as 'one of the guys' and it's mostly because I really did behave like one. Normally, I'd have just said, "Yeah, ok," and gone on in, knowing full well I could trust them. Not only was I an obnoxious little tell-it-like-it-is no-filtered fuck, but our friends all knew my dad well enough, and what would happen if they messed with me at all.

But this was different. There was that immediate feeling in the pit of my stomach that was rising up towards my throat. Not a 'vomit' kind of rising, just a physical response telling me to pay attention. It wasn't just that I didn't know Danny that well; I know very well how to pee in front of people and keep everything covered so nobody can see a thing. (sometimes situations are unavoidable, you know?) But...I didn't want to piss off Danny by saying something rude. I mean, we were stuck with him for at least one season so there was no need to make waves. But then an idea hit me, immediately.

"That's okay. I can wait. Take your time," I said. I ran, and I mean RAN, on my tip-toes so I didn't make a lot of noise on the elevated, cheap plywood trailer floor, and didn't EVEN care that the screen door slammed behind me. I didn't want to let Danny know that he'd triggered my alarm because, as always, I was a calculating, revenge-hungry girl.

I went outside, walked out into the woods a bit, and peed. Then I went back to my dad and he said, "I thought you were going inside to pee." "I was going to, but Danny was in there." I didn't tell my father or Tony what things Danny had said. All I said was, "That guy's weird." I was just going to show them, later.

The group always had dinner together. Sometime after dinner, while we were sitting in the living room exchanging hunting stories, Danny got up to go to the bathroom. I counted to 10, then leaned over and whispered for my dad to follow me and to be quiet, and motioned to Tony to follow. We walked down the hall to the bathroom. He was mid-pee.

Instead of pushing on the handle, I knocked. "Occupied," Danny said. "Oh, I'm sorry. Didn't mean to do this to you again!" but I just stood there and held out my hand to tell my dad and Tony to wait. "Nah, Stillie. No problem. Come on in. You don't have to hold it like last time." Pee stopped, but no flush. We waited for a second longer. "Coming?"

My dad damned-near kicked the door off its hinges. He crossed the 8-foot length of the bathroom faster than I'd ever seen anyone move. Tony followed and I just walked back out to all the chairs and sat down, staring at Danny's father. I didn't want to see anything. A second later, there was a little yelp.

I have to say, looking back on it now and realizing my age, I was a ballsy little shit.

Dad and Tony literally dragged Danny by the neck and one arm, totally pantsless, through the trailer and out the door, not very concerned about the fact that there was metal and then concrete stairs leading to the ground. Or that it was about 30 degrees outside.

Danny's dad stood up and started towards the door. Another hunter said, "Man, you might just wanna keep your old ass outta this mess. You're a little dense but you'd better listen to me on this one. I don't know what just happened, but it doesn't involve you." Two other hunters nodded in agreement. The father sat back down, craning his neck to look towards the door. (Good time to add that, with this being a hunting camp, all the windows were covered with plywood screwed to the wall. Too long to explain why.) I maintained my smirk while staring at the father. The other guys just slowly sipped their hot chocolate in silence.

The dragging noises and grunting continued until they finally trailed off.

It seemed like an eternity and the batteries in the clock over the space heater (white trash fireplace?) had been dead for a couple of years. I knew my father wouldn't kill the guy...probably. Tony probably wouldn't let him, anyway.

An eternity later, Danny came stumbling back in the trailer, scraped up and a little bloody all over, dirty, and holding his shredded shirt. At least his shoes were still on. As was the garish cross on a chain around his neck.

"Dad, we need to go. Right now. We need to get packed up," he choked out, as he lurched down the hall to the back bedroom he was sharing with his father. The old man wouldn't take his eyes off my dad and Tony when they came in a few seconds later, their jeans a little dirty with dead grass caked on the knees. The old man got out of the recliner and followed Danny into the room.

I'm not sure how much time had passed, but it was only long enough for my dad to step outside and brush off his jeans. Just about the time he sat down in a chair, Danny and his father were carrying bags and gun cases and pillows through the living room and out the door.

"We're going to tell EVERYONE about this," Danny's father said. My dad laughed. "Don't worry; I'm going to do the same, I promise you that one."

When my dad heard Danny's truck crunching over leaves as they drove away, Dad said, "Let's follow them out." Tony got up and they went out to my dad's truck. 

It was mostly silent in the living room with the other three guys while they were gone. One asked, "I guess you're okay?" "Yeah. He scared me pretty bad, though. He's not a good guy." One of the men looked at the floor and absentmindedly fiddled with his earlobe. He was the man who had vouched for Danny's dad and, by proxy, Danny. "Mike, I'm not mad at you. I don't think Dad will be, either."

My father is a very well-respected man. Likeable. Smart. Knows a little about everything and everything about some things. As a little kid would be, I think Mike was more afraid of losing my dad's trust and for disappointing him.

Dad and Tony finally came back. "We followed them out the gate and then changed the lock codes. It's too late tonight, but we'll call the rancher tomorrow and give him the new codes."

My dad motioned for Mike to follow him to the back bedroom. He looked worried. I knew he had no reason to be; my father was a reasonable man. If he weren't, Danny wouldn't have been able to walk back into the trailer.

The rest of us could kind of hear some muffled talking but couldn't make out any words. Mike and my dad came out smiling and chuckling a little bit, and my dad had his hand resting on Mike's shoulder. When they sat down, Mike wasn't looking anybody in the eye, but he was smiling a little. 

Dad stood up and walked over to the wall-mounted map and removed two of the push pins. "So, let's figure out who's going to be where in the morning, huh? It's getting about time to get some shut-eye, right?" The guys stood up and started planning out the next morning. Dad called me over and pointed to one pin and said, "This is where I'm going to put you in the morning. Does that sound okay to you?" "Sure. Wherever you want me is fine with me." He shoved a pink pushpin into the map.

Neither of us got a deer that weekend.

On the long drive back home...oh Jesus. My dad let me have it for about 100 miles. He went on and on about how I should have told him at the very beginning that Danny made me uncomfortable and how I should have told him after the first bathroom incident. I defended myself by telling him that so many times, nobody believes kids when they tell on people like that. I tried to appeal to his common sense by reminding him that nothing had happened. I tried to explain how my amazing plan worked much better because they got to see it firsthand.

He sighed. All he said before the next 100 miles in silence was, "Well, I guess nobody can doubt whether or not I'm your dad."

A few months later, after the season was over, one of our hunting buddies mailed my dad a newspaper clipping from the city where he and Danny both lived. Danny had gotten arrested for "allegedly" sexually assaulting two preteen girls - cousins - who were neighbors. They'd stopped at his house to try to sell chocolate for a school fundraiser and he got them inside. And then raped them both. They were brave and ended up telling their aunt about it. He was out on bail and awaiting trial.

Dad decided to pull this clipping out right after dinner but before we cleared the table. Of course, he'd told Mom but she never said anything to me about it. At that point, she spoke up and said, "I hope they put him under the jail. Those poor little girls." I could tell Mom was trying not to get blubbery so I stood up and started clearing dishes.

That was pretty much the end of it ever being mentioned. I still have no idea if he was ever convicted or whatever. I've never had any nightmares, I never developed any weird mistrust of men. I still think men who leave a couple of shirt buttons undone to reveal their dark, hairy chests so as to show off their garish cross necklace are douchebags.

And...I ALWAYS trust my gut.

.
 

One Sentence Triggered a Memory

They say that smells trigger memories, as does music. I've heard of people hearing one phrase or sentence and an entire experience floods back, washing them with anxiety, fear, anger and, on occasion, happy feelings. I never thought I would hear something that I'd never remembered hearing and have an entire nightmare come back to me, as well as recognizing that it was a pivotal moment in a cascade of tragic events that followed me for a decade.

But today I heard a woman say something in the store to her kid, and I stopped dead in my tracks. The sounds, images, and panic came rushing back to me, in short flashes of still images at first, then a black and white movie. The fact that a person can remember something in such detail, when they have no recollection of the actual event beforehand, is frightening.

Her name was Melody. She was two grades older than me and I guess I was in 4th or 5th year? She was a slightly light-skinned black girl, with medium brown hair. She always had it in pigtails or divided into three sections, with the hair twisted rather than braided, and secured with those weird little ball-elastic ties that we all used back then. She was tall for her age but proportionate. She had a brother that was in my school but younger than me, but I never saw him except for the bus stop in the morning. He didn't talk. They didn't have a father and I'd only seen the mother's face a few times when she'd stick her head out the door to look around.

We lived on a side street with lots of couples, but no families. They rented a trashy house, as most of the people in the neighborhood did. We were the only white family and one of the only few who actually owned their house. Even though I was a petite blonde haired, blue eyed girl, Melody and I still ended up doing things together on our street. A lot of times we'd draw on our driveways with chalk, or listen to music and look for 4-leaf clovers in the yards of the abandoned houses. Sounds innocent enough, I guess. Sometimes she'd touch me in ways I didn't like. It wasn't sexual abuse or anything, I just didn't like her leaning up against me while we were sitting there, or playing with my hair, or asking me to sit in her lap. I never really spoke out; I just squirmed away and said "stop it," in a way that probably sounded more like, "aww, stahp it!" It didn't really happen a lot but it happened enough that I really hated it.

Many times, if we were close to her house, we would start to hear very loud adult screaming coming from inside. There would be banging, crashing, whatever, and then her brother would start scream-crying. I'm not sure what went on in that house but, every time it started, Melody would jump up and run in the house.

I told my parents about it. My dad said, "Typical for a family like that." My mom said, "Leave it alone. It's none of our business." So I pretended it wasn't ever happening.

One day Melody and I were outside and we were talking. Who knows about what, but she ended up asking me if I was ticklish. I said yes. Back then it was true. She poked me in the ribs with a finger and asked me if it tickled. I told her no, she just jabbed me. Then she grabbed my ribcage with one hand and gave a little squeeze. It tickled, yes, and I did my best to mask the fact that it DID tickle and I was getting ultra-creeped out. So I told her I was hungry and was going to go home to get a snack and I'd see her later if she was still out.

But when I stood up, she grabbed me with both hands around the rib cage and started tickling me pretty aggressively. I was flailing around, trying to get loose, but she thought it was because I was just being tickled and she was laughing the whole time. I had my eyes closed because I didn't want to see her horrible, gap-toothed mouth grinning at me while she did it. I didn't see that she'd leaned forward to get up and, with my arms moving around, I kind of hit her across the side of the head with my forearm. Not hard, I don't think.

She shoved me down hard onto the ground, stood up and straddled me. Her face transformed into something I'd never seen before. (This was my first experience with any kind of real-life violence rather than cartoons on TV) She leaned down about a foot from my face and said, "You little fucking bitch," raised her hand back, slapped me hard across my left cheek, turned and left. I was literally speechless.

I was a good kid. I rarely got in trouble at home and I'd never been hit, much less slapped. I'd even only been spanked twice. I got up, refusing to let myself cry until I got in the house even though my face was twisted up. When I walked in, my mom could see the red handprint covering, basically, the entire left side of my head. Naturally, I had to tell her the whole story.

I don't think my dad was home from work yet. I don't know why my mom went over. Maybe to do a mom-to-mom talk? Whatever the case, she made me go with her. She wanted Melody's mom to see my face.

There was lots of screaming inside the house and we could hear a TV turned up loud. I guess eventually the mom heard the doorbell/banging on the door and opened it. She wouldn't come outside but rather stuck her head around the edge of the door. The entire inside of the house was pitch-black and a musty smell blasted out through the crack.

I remember that she immediately began yelling at my mom in some unintelligible ghetto slang. My mom still stayed calm. She turned my head a little and informed the mother that Melody had done that to me. A girl who probably weighed twice as much as I did and was a good foot and a half taller than me. But the mom yelled about how nobody could prove Melody did it and so on. Then more indecipherable shit.

The mom kept yelling and I don't think my mom could make out what she was saying. I did make out a few words that I knew were supposed to be bad words about white people. My mom just stood there with her hands defiantly propped on her hips and her lips pursed tightly.

The mom simply would not quit yelling. She didn't even really have anything to yell about, seeing as my mom had literally only spoken two sentences. My mom could tell she wasn't going to get anywhere with that crazy lady.

My mother threw her hands up in the air and kind of waved them around a little and screamed back at that woman, "All you know how to do is yell! I feel sorry for your children for having such an ignorant, evil hag for a mother!" And she grabbed my hand, spun us around, and stomped us back across and down the street.

And that's where the memory ends. With the realization of "All you know to do is yell," and the fact that it came from my mother as she was trying to get reasons for why her little girl was smacked by a girl with a seriously unfair advantage.

I started thinking about everything that had happened after that. I'd never had bad interactions with black people prior to that. Honestly, I hadn't had many at all, despite where we lived. My dad was racist, but I hadn't adopted his attitude, mostly because my mother was the opposite end of the spectrum. 

My mother had a black nanny, who lived in the bedroom at the end of the hall and taught her how to cook, the proper way to clean and polish antique furniture, and the words to the old black spirituals that they'd sing together as my mom sat on the counter and watched "Mammy" (I swear, that's what she told the kids to call her...it wasn't a racist term just imposed on her) wash the dishes after dinner. My mom has quite a long repertoire of stories about Mammy. She died before I got to know her, but I have 2 pictures of her holding me when I was a baby.

But after that day with Melody, I've come to figure out, my attitudes and emotions towards black folks were not the same. It wasn't fear so much as just the strongest sense of hate. I knew a long time ago that I'd felt that was from a young age, but I didn't know started it.

As I got older, the neighborhood got way worse, and we couldn't sell our house without losing our asses on it, so I endured the abuse, beatings, bullying, and hatred for almost 10 more years before we were able to move to a better neighborhood.

I lived a life as an openly-racist white girl, dated a couple of skinheads (not nazi kinds, just white-power kinds), and tried to find some kind of retribution for all my pain and scars, both mental and physical, caused by blacks. I know damned well that there were plenty of harmless people who became the victim of our hate crimes, and I didn't give a fuck, because their people did the same thing to me: the innocent, petite little white girl who just tried to go to school, get good grades, and keep the hell to herself.

I can't say I've eliminated the racism from my mind. My interactions with them have not improved, really. I just stay out of those areas unless I'm driving through, just to remind myself why I've worked so damned hard to make sure I never have to live in a ghetto ever again. To be honest, I don't care that it's 2019 and we're supposed to be a more "enlightened" society. I know not every black human is a bad one. Deep in my heart, I know that, and I'm fully aware that, peel off that skin, and we look the same. They have human DNA the same as me. But still.

It's made my life full of inner-conflict, that's for sure. As a young adult, I had to learn to hide my racism and do my absolute best to treat everyone the same because that's what's expected in this day and age and, really, unless they victimize me first, do they deserve to be treated with prejudice? No. To make things even more complicated, my now-boyfriend was married to a black woman - a pretty ghetto one, I thought, despite her intellect and ambivalent civility when I met her once - and I came clean about all my feelings one night when I was drunk. He's never held it against me.

And all it took to come to this realization was a mother in the store, raising her voice at her screaming kid who wanted candy. "All you know how to do is yell!"

Because of things like that, I remain...