There was this guy I know, this is his story: “Long ago in a far away state this guy, as a child, suddenly could not walk. It turned out that he had polio. The thing is since he was so young and no one actually told him he couldn’t, he one day was found by his mother crawling around - his polio seemed to have gone away.
Later, as he grew, he had an accident, he shattered his elbow. The boy had surgery to try and repair things. When the doctors got done the mother and father were told that he would not be able to do a lot of things like the other kids. No one actually told the boy he couldn’t do things so he did them anyway. Much later he even joined the military and had a good career.
As a teenager he also broke his foot. Regardless, he had a cast and tended to continue to do what the heck he wanted and didn’t even think much about his foot. This boy tended to heal pretty darn fast. Later, in a situation that is not really a good one he found himself trying to enter this door to make a questionable purchase when suddenly he found his head slammed between the door and the doorjamb and a very big fellow hitting him in the face. He pulled out and took off with this very large, muscular, strong and mean person chasing him down where the boy turned, raised his hands with palms forward and said something that must have been good because the really big guy stopped in a offense stance and didn’t hit him again.
There were several of these stupid kind of things in those teen years. Like the time one of his so called friends, Wayne was his name, got pissed and jumped into the car they were driving where the boy was seated in the back, he in the front, he turned with a very large and sharp pointy thing called a hunting knife and stuck it against the boys chest where it was moved up to the throat and then the guy asked him a question to which the answer must have been right, he put the knife away and that was that. The boy never reached a point of thought that he was even in any danger and that was either scary as hell or showed just how stupid he was.
Then there was the time he was driving with a bunch of friends all piled into what was a cut down vehicle that was stripped down to the frame, a seat, the engine, etc. (later would be a stripped down version of the dune buggy of the early sixties, etc.) where they were screaming through the woods and back-trails laughing like mad having a ton of fun when they slid trough a corner turn, hit a stump sticking up about three feet from ground level and therefore throwing everyone out the side into tree trunks and palmettos bushes and so on. He was seemingly unfazed, stood up, looked around and just whooped and laughed even tho one of the others shattered their ankle. All of them helped the guy into the vehicle then rode to the hospital.
One day the guy, the guy I know, was working drywall in a construction job where he took his partner’s cigarettes. He thought it was funny until he was walking away then felt a breeze by his head and then heard a thunk when the drywall hatchet hit a wood stud and stuck like a tomahawk. He returned the cigarettes, yea. Then the both went back to hanging drywall. Stupid is as Stupid does, don’t you think.
In the military he said he was hit in the face/jaw with a training rifle and broke his jaw. He was running with his other recruits when his legs/shins gave out, stress fractures, only to find out that he had them for several weeks but would not quit running and training until the legs just gave out. You can see why since it resulted in a setback and additional time, i.e., instead of nine weeks it turned into six months.
Then there were numerous times he had confrontations in the military where the first was an attempt to toss him and his entire bunk out a second story window. He woke, fought back then chased his attackers away till the next day when he walked into the bay where all the guys who attacked him resided and then challenged them, they backed down. The next was the three times others set his bunk and him on fire where one other stepped up to the plate and woke him up so he wouldn’t burn to death (guy, the guy I know, was drunk and got drunk a lot even before the military along with some other stuff).
Then there was the night he was sleeping it off when another disgruntled military associate decided he would end him with a two-by-four across the forehead. I can’t believe it but he woke up, jumped up and went after the guy only the guy he chased just happened to be faster. Then there was the time he was lying in the duty bunk dozing when he felt a tingle sensation, opened his eyes, and standing there was another associate holding steel student driver signs in a position that if he had completed the move would have put the edge of the steel signs in his face or neck. He kind of froze but looked him directly in the eyes then suddenly the other guy set the signs down and walked away - lucky stiff.
Enough already, this guy I know often projected a lack of emotional involvement in a lot of things he did, was exposed to and to what happened to him. It seemed his only emotional expressions were anger, a lot of anger. There was, he told me, fear as well but often it didn’t stop his taking actions. He said he sometimes had what today might be called adrenal flooding that actually caused his loss of a few minutes of time in a stressful situation, like the first minutes or two then the black receded and he could see and more often than not was already moving, etc. This seems to speak to either a mind-set/mind-state that allowed him to always act or it was some naturally occurring emotional obstacle that didn’t cause the freeze in those situation. He said he did have a variety of times he initial froze but then would act.
What makes me wonder is this, does he or did he just naturally have that ability? Was his lack of emotional expressions and effects give him that chance to act the way he did? He found that something like “alexithymia” might explain it but doesn’t really know.
Anyway, even if the edge is derived from this alexithymia, it still does not account for what sometimes appeared to be his guardian angel looking out for his stupidity and asshole-ness (really, all of his experiences with conflict and violence, even this low level stuff, did derive from his constant asshole-ness).
It does speak to a certain mind-state that either natural or trained does promote actions that are not, at least some, held back by the freeze, etc. It also provided survival even tho his actions always resulted in the actions he would have to handle. He may have been lucky. Maybe those early obstacles helped build a mind-set/state that then carried him through those minor events building his ???
Many of those answers can be found, as my studies these last few years indicate, in the materials and research I recommend below. It does answer a lot of questions the guy I know present from his experiences, even if low level conflict and violence oriented. Maybe it is just a blessing since this guy I know seems to have a more stoic emotionally restricted way about him except in very, very few cases that cause an emotional response and so on.
I was hearing another of his stories when all these thoughts flooded in and resulted in a lot of questions but few definitive answers. Is it possible that this is some kind of inherited gene thing that gave him this type of luck? Was it developed with luck that he would act over simply freezing, etc.? Does it mean he never freezes or experiences fear? He says it doesn’t but the after effects seem inconsequential, it doesn’t bother him and he lets that crap go more often than not.
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