There was a red Jeep sitting near the power lines, an out-of-the-way place apart from the houses in the neighborhood. I was walking Prince when I noticed it\u2014and knew to be wary since it was an unfamiliar vehicle. The car\u2019s windows were down and as I drew closer, I could see a guy sitting in the driver\u2019s seat.<\/p>\n
An alarm rang in my head, telling me to be alert. I held the dog\u2019s leash firmly, positioned him on my side closest to the car, took a deep breath and picked up speed as I began to pass.<\/p>\n
Then I heard his voice. \u201cHey, good-looking!\u201d<\/p>\n
My blood turned to ice and I readied myself to get into defensive stance.<\/p>\n
The Rape Aggression Defense class (RAD) I took at the local police department taught me to do exactly that. I had practiced for years and now it looked as if I was finally getting an opportunity to use my self-defense tools.<\/p>\n
Out of the corner of my eye I could see the driver leaning towards me as he spoke through the passenger-side window. At least he hadn\u2019t yet jumped out of the car, so I was about to shout \u201cNO!\u201d and take off running\u2026when I realized the man was Officer Jeff, one of my RAD instructors. A friend.<\/p>\n
Or maybe that characterization is questionable since he nearly scared the shit out of me.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m glad I was prepared to react in the proper way. Next time, though, I\u2019ll probably just sic the dog on him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There was a red Jeep sitting near the power lines, an out-of-the-way place apart from the houses in the neighborhood. I was walking Prince when I noticed it\u2014and knew to be wary since it was an unfamiliar vehicle. The car\u2019s windows were down and as I drew closer, I could see a guy sitting in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oldkaren.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oldkaren.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oldkaren.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oldkaren.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oldkaren.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=317"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/oldkaren.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":318,"href":"https:\/\/oldkaren.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317\/revisions\/318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oldkaren.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oldkaren.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oldkaren.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}