In general, my instinct for recognizing when I'm prey is pretty good. I have escaped the ugly statistics, because I recognize that I am a small animal in a big, dangerous world. Now, I wish I could say something similarly positive about my Hunnish anger, but I digress.

As an older grade schooler and beyond, I bravely traveled the Philadelphia public transportation system in all directions, mostly alone but sometimes with friends, mostly at reasonable hours, but not always. My mother was a New Yorker who had done the same, and it was fairly safe, plus we had no choice without a car. In high school, I started taking some dance classes at the opposite end of the city which began in the evening and had me arriving home between 10:15 and 10:30pm, so in the dark, no matter which season.

One night, after I exited the subway and began to walk my five city blocks home, I became aware of the sound of footsteps but couldn't see anyone directly behind me, presumably because of a slight distance and the dark. I picked up my pace and heard the same behind me. This accounted for about two of the blocks. With whiskers and ears twitching, I ran the last three blocks home, hopscotching successfully over the dog shit on the one block where every dog owner seemed to take their pet, never a runner, but with youth at my side, I made it inside and do not remember telling my mother about it. I also don't remember if I went to those evening dance classes anymore after that, so probably not.

Fast forward to college and a few years beyond, I remember reading feminist writings, including one woman who wrote that she was not going to live under different conditions than a man and wasn't going to let their behavior dictate what she would be able to do. She would continue to walk at night as she pleased. I remember thinking that I, feminist though I was at that time, was not going confront reality at such a potentially great price to myself, and that it was only a matter of time before she would be raped, robbed, etc.

Fast forward about a decade as a single mom, not by choice and missing what I needed to live with the remains of my marriage, I was trying to feel better and knowing it wouldn't happen for me at home while staring at the exposed brick wall in my tiny kitchen, I went past downtown Baltimore to the Fells Point area to a bar I had discovered during a "Pub Walk" activity listed in the City Paper in the evening, to learn what R & B singing sounded like and to be more sociable. I left in the midnight range, prudent enough for a young thirty-something. My car was a few blocks away. Again, I heard footsteps, picked up my pace, and ended up rushing to get into my car (no high heels since my teen years when I badly sprained my ankle and it continued to be a weak point), and after I was inside, driving off, saw that there were two men nearby.

As much as I've been accused of overthinking and over analyzing, this is one area where I've never done that. If I have any intuitions, I follow them. Safer to never find out what could have been or if my instinct was correct. Unlike the people who never made it to work or to a flight and then learn that if they had, they wouldn't be here anymore, I have no proof most of the time, and my proof, when I do get it, would be poo-pooed by those who prefer to give others the benefit of the doubt or have told me I'm paranoid about one thing or the other, or that "You can't let that dictate your life." Wanna bet? I'm still here, aren't I??

I have two more anecdotes, way more interesting and clearly showing that my brain and intuitions were operating at a much higher level than what was normal for me.

I had stayed doing work at a local college satellite building on a Saturday night in the computer lab until about 10-10:30pm and was parked legally as close to the front door as possible. I wasn't trying to be sociable anymore, and wasn't on duty with my children that weekend. This was in what James has called the "Whitebreadistan" area of Baltimore County. I pulled my backpack together and headed toward the outside door of the building. The best way I can describe what comes next is as a warning voice inside my head which accurately and succinctly guided me to safety in a number of steps, maybe my intuition, I really don't care to define it. It was not the more rambling voice that meanders through my head ordinarily.

I stopped short in the vestibule, characteristically disorganized and somewhat take my time before I'm actually strapped in and driving, I heard, "Get your keys out, in case you have to get into the car quickly." So I did. Keys in hand, I step outside and begin walking to my car. Out of the shadows at the bottom of the lot, starts to emerge slowly a large, cadillac-style gold-colored car, heading in a straight line toward the opposite end of the front row I was parked in. I threw my backpack into the passenger seat, started the car up. "It's going to try to cut you off." I made the tightest turn I had ever made to face the direction of the exit. The big car had reached my row and was now turning to face diagonally toward my exiting path, to cut me off. I gunned the accelerator and got out, driving like the wind and hoping they weren't going to follow me.

I got home and made a useless call to campus security, who asked if I had gotten a license number. Well no, I wanted to live, not take a license number to the grave with me. I remembered thinking that the trunk of the luxury-sized car would have been perfect to transport me in. Here, too, if at any moment, I had dismissed what I was experiencing, I probably wouldn't be writing about it now. Best guess as to why the car was initially driving slowly up from the bottom of the lot: it didn't want to arouse attention or suspicion and may have even had a plan for initially engaging me. Paranoid, no—grew up in a city. Alive, yes. Luckily, I don't question this stuff, though I seem to question everything else.

Finally, a favorite experience, in which I was taking a night hike with a guy friend, who would have been unable to defend anyone but was an otherwise prepared hiker, wearing a small flashlight on his forehead. There was also an eclipse which we were trying to sight, but since we couldn't from what should have been a good location, we recooped with a night hike.

It was interesting to go into the dark (I always ran from it when young) and feel my body and my brain begin to adjust to the environment. I noticed that my footing was relatively sure and that I was moving pretty fluidly (no careful thinking about where I was putting my feet). Shortly, I noticed that my senses were heightened. My brain felt tingly, for lack of a better way to describe it. As is typical of me, I test my experiences whenever possible and it makes practical sense, so I set up little tasks for myself during the walk which would have required me to simply allow my senses to guide me, to see if the outcome would be as I expected. I played this game with myself as much as I could during the walk, which lasted under an hour but was long enough to give me the primitive experience of having my lizard brain take over. I was actually in awe and felt a bit of a high, so it's also likely that certain brain chemicals were released (I know this feeling very well for myself).

It also made me remember a film I saw with William Hurt, called "Altered States," involving his experiences in an isolation tank, in which he devolves into progressively more primitive life forms. I loved it and finally, on my first trip to the west coast, my younger daughter treated me to a Groupon for an hour in an isolation tank, because I got all excited when I heard that she and her fiance had gone recently for the first time. They both told me that they didn't quite like the experience and why. So, armed with the information about their two relatively small hiccups, I went to have my own experience.

The groovy front desk guy at the meditation/altered states center told me I would be initially disoriented (as he had been), that it would be normal, but after a short period, it would pass. Well, lizard brain to the rescue, I didn't have a single one of these experiences and understand completely now why we don't have such a thing in Baltimore. There's a book, that from a very different angle—one of surviving unexpected violence—also describes how the lizard brain takes over to help us survive. It's called "The Gift of Fear," by Gavin de Becker. I seriously appreciated reading it and find it relevant to our discussions of survival under urban siege.