I don’t think I was programmed with the usual “Fight or Flight” Tendencies. I think when I am startled, adrenaline starts flowing out my tear ducts, and it might be easy to mistake the adrenaline juice for tears running down my cheeks.

I’ve had several incidents to prove this, but most recently, I tried to go grocery shopping at the “far away, cheaper, more enjoyable” grocery store. I figured I would save enough money to justify taking a taxi back to our apartment.

What I learned is that taxi drivers don’t stop when they see you laden with grocery bags because they know you will be a cheap ride. So here I am, laden with more groceries than usual filled with heavy cans, because there was a sale on soup, and trying to flag a cabbie down with my elbow. As I’m doing this, I watch cab drivers with no passengers turn their lights off mid-ride and refuse to pull over.

So I am trudging down a scary street, almost halfway home with fifty pounds of groceries, feeling perfectly sorry for myself when I decide to call Jeremy and ask if he will meet me half-way. Mid phone call, a nice cabbie pulls up, and saves Jeremy the trouble.

I wasn’t expecting to take a cab, so I am at inaccessible street corner, and as the cab driver pulls over, cars start piling up behind him. I hastened to bundle up the groceries that I had put down for my phone call, but I’m carrying them in my pinky and I am holding my phone in between my chin and neck, so of course it goes plummeting and I lose all the groceries in my left hand.

Cue honking from the cars behind. I look around desperately, and a man, a seemingly normal man, offers to help me into the cab, and I just… stupidly accepted. He picks up my six bags and gets halfway to the cab (about five feet) when he asks, “Can I have a few bucks for bus fare?”

And I crumble, because I thought this man was kind-hearted but he had an ulterior motive, and my wallet is in the bottom of my purse and people are honking and I know that I don’t have any cash on me. I apologized and he put the groceries down… on the pavement, not in the cab.

“Please,” he persists.

“I’m sorry!” I insist, trying to swipe up my remaining groceries. It’s not that I didn’t want to pay him for his trouble; I legitimately had no cash.

“No!” yelled the cabbie with a thick Indian accent. “You go away!” he shoo-ed the man.

The man, not deterred by the cabbie inside the car grabs my arm and pulled as I’m trying to disappear into the cab. I was already extremely flustered by the heavy groceries, and the tumbling cell phone, and the horn honking, so though I tug back, terrified, but doing little to actually disuade the man from yanking on me.

The cabbie gets out of his car and screams at the man,“NO! YOU GO AWAY.” And I closed the door with a snap and the cab driver gets back in, waves an annoyed hand at the honkers and speeds off the premise.

It turns out my good samaritan cab driver saw me when I first left the grocery store but he had a passenger, so he came back as quickly as he could for me. I think Jeremy prayed him there.

Obviously I tipped generously (on a credit card), and thanked the cabbie profusely, which felt like meager thanks considering everything. He did what I could not–he fought for me.

I held my tears in until I saw Jeremy, which was an accomplishment considering I wanted to break down inside the cab. But once Jeremy had me in his arms, all the pent-up adrenaline leaked down my cheeks.

I know I was supposed to forcefully order the man away, I know I was supposed to blow a rape whistle and perhaps crunch his knee caps with the heel of my foot. I know I was supposed to be stronger and braver in this scary moment.

Next time.

Am I a wuss, or what?

Pretend this weirdly-postured man is me, laden with groceries. And scary bear is the man that pulled my arm. And the  yellow suit case is the taxi. That being said, who would be stupid enough to fight a bear? I feel a bear would respond much more sympathetically to tears, so maybe there’s a method to my pathetic madness.