Valentine’s Day weekend, Julie & i were returning from a nice dinner out when we stopped by the grocery store to get the right kind of diet dog food. It was about 830pm on a Friday night.
Checking out, we all of a sudden hear a man shout from somewhere behind us. Stop!” or “Hey!”, something like that. Everyone naturally turns to see what’s going on. As we turn, I see the flash of a young woman run out the swooshing double-doors, with the man hot on her heels. At the 2nd set of automatic doors, she has to pause just long enough that her pursuer catches up. The guy tackles her just outside the store.
Meanwhile, customers and employees alike are trying to decipher the sequence, and decide whether we should do anything. My first thought was that the man was some sort of psycho, and the girl was trying to get away from him. Maybe just a natural inclination that the more powerful male must be preying on the weaker female (that’s not some grand political or social commentary; just an observation of pure physical prowess among these 2 folks).
I eventually (what? 3-5 seconds later) decide that I should go outside and see if everything is ok. By the time I get outside, the girl is tearing off in her car as a bagger tries to jot down her license plate. Turns out that she had snatched the purse of the man’s wife, while they shopped. When he tackled the thief, he got the purse back with little struggle.
Crime, in the suburbs!
The guy walks back into the store, a bit disheveled, and looking quite annoyed at the rest of us for not helping him. But the cliché of “it all happened so fast” is quite true. The situation is just so unexpected and comes upon you so fast that your brain cannot make sense of it quickly enough for you to help.
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