Tuesday morning, my alarm went off at 4:30am.  I laid in bed checking my work email and reading the new posts on Twitter that had come in since I went to bed at 11pm the night before, all the while trying  to wake myself up.  After responding to an email, I quickly put on my running shoes and clothes, ate a carton of yogurt, filled up my water bottle and headed out the door.

I met my friends at 5am for a nice 7-mile run in the Boise foothills.  When I got out of my car, they happily greeted me (they are morning people who workout at this hour almost every day) and not too soon after, we were running down a long street in the north end of our quaint little city.

About halfway down aforementioned long street in north Boise, we saw a car speeding towards the intersection with the next cross street.  Our group of alert morning people cautioned each other to slow down until we determined the car was going to stop at the stop sign and saw us and motioned for us to cross.

At the last minute, the car slowed and hastily stopped.  It quickly became apparent that the driver and passenger were both young and likely coming home from a late night out.  This is the thing about running this early, you run into some strange people still drunk from the night before.

It quickly turned into an uncomfortable encounter as the inhabitants of the car recognized that five women were now walking toward the intersection where they were performing a California stop and they started hooting and hollering and saying a few comments I did not understand.  And then there was the one statement that was so clear and so vulgar, it has been popping into my head off and on since.

“I want to rape you!”

As you can imagine, it was shocking!

I must not have taken the guy seriously because I didn’t feel threatened like those words should threaten a person.  Part of it was the safety in numbers factor and also because the car quickly drove off, but I didn’t feel the fear those words should elicit.

But I kept thinking about that word all day long…

Why why WHY would anyone say what that individual said?  Was he strung out on some sort of drug?  Was he drunk?  Certainly he wouldn’t say THOSE WORDS sober, right?

And the fact that he said it in the presence of another person who was driving the car, presumably his friend.  Was his friend shocked?  What kind of friendship fosters an environment where it is safe to say, “I want to rape you.”

And about the boy who said them.  Is he such a revolting person that he is unable to sleep at night?  Could he possibly have understood and truly meant what he said?

As you can see, I grapple with these questions even though the individual is not worth a second thought.  I know that by me thinking about him, he wins, but I think the five of us are all allowed some time to process this.

Those of us running all had our happy little worlds come into a proverbial and literal intersection with a person who is obviously not in a similar happy little world and had there been a collision, it could have been devastating.

Anyway, this is the extent of the thought I am going to put into this encounter.  Creepy and hopefully unique.

The lesson of the day is to not go running by yourself, especially when it is dark because you never know who or what you are going to run into.

Have you ever been threatened like this before?  I hope not, but if so, how did it affect you?  What did you do?

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