On a Tuesday morning I was buried in administrative duties. Tuesday mornings were significantly busier than others due to overtime scheduling but this one was made worse by collective bargaining. I had been chosen from the supervisory staff to represent management while we negotiated a contract for the coming years, it was dragging on. By this point the two sides had been working separately for several months but hadn't actually been in the same room, I wanted this to be over but it hadn't even really begun. I had a meeting scheduled for 1000 hours with the management representatives and was rushing to finish a proposal for a new overtime process while using the current overtime process to schedule open shifts. 1000 hours was a tight deadline but I was gunning to get through it.

This was my last day of work before vacation. My wife and I had been invited to the wedding of an old friend of ours on the other side of the country. We made plans to attend the wedding and then spend a week hiking and maybe even climbing in the mountains. In my mind, I'll admit that I was already there. A job in a large city is fine for the experience but I could never live there. It had been a year since my last vacation and spending time in the outdoors is what really keeps me alive. But even travel is stressful and over the last couple weeks we had been making hotel and rental car reservations, packing and making an itinerary of things we wanted to see. I was busy, my desk was full of work papers, but my mind was on other things.

At 0957 hours Mike, my manager barged into my office asking if I was ready to go. I had lost track of time so I'm sure I looked a bit frazzled as I got up and tidied the mess of papers weighing down my desktop to skip out. The meeting was in the building next door so we had to hurry to get there on time but I had too much coffee and water which meant I had to stop at the washroom on the way.

At 1005 hours I was feeling very relieved but also very late. We started to the other building and were engaged in the details of the meeting as we walked. We went over things from the last meeting and talked about how our proposals would be taken, but then something caught my eye.

About 100 feet away from us in the middle of the property was a male swinging around a large wooden stick. The property is a mixed office and retail environment with conservative corporate values and a male swinging around a stick stands out and is frowned upon. I stopped talking to Mike who noticed right away that I was distracted. "What the fuck is this guy doing?" It could have been either of us who said it. I was in uniform so I told Mike I would go talk to him a move him along.

I paused to observe him and ask myself If I was in danger. I wondered what strange appeal this environment had to a man wielding a stick but he appeared slow and controlled. His movements were similar to that which I had seen from martial arts practice in the past and he appeared to be demonstrating a Kendo Kata. The stick also he had a slight curve to it like a Kendo stick. I don't know a lot about Kendo but he appeared to know what he was doing and seemed calm, the movement looked therapeutic to him. He was wearing loose fitting pants that reminded me of a Gi and a Brazilian soccer jersey with a green bandana wrapped around his head. He may have been as tall as me but was thin and I would guess he weighed 150 lbs. His skin was olive coloured and had a few visible tattoos but nothing that stood out from a distance. He was between 20-30 years of age.

I have been in some shit in my life, but I have become a good judge of character and situations because of it. After putting together all the information in front of me I decided that this young man had found an unfortunate place to practice his martial art and just needed to be moved along. I called dispatch on the radio to tell them I would be approaching a male with a stick.

As I approached him, he saw me coming and stopped swinging the stick. He put the point down on the ground and rested his arms on top of the butt to wait for me. This is a good sign and something I look for when approaching people, it shows that the uniform presence is noticed and respected. I stopped a comfortable talking distance from him and stood with my hands on the front of my belt. This is a fairly natural position which broadens your shoulders and makes you appear confident; it also keeps you elbows bent and hands in front of you in case you need them.

I started with "Hey, how's it going?"

"I'm alright, what do you need?"

"Listen, I can't have you swinging that stick around alright?"

Annoyed, "why not? I'm not hurting anyone"

"Well no, I know. But look where you are. Look at the environment. It's crowed and everyone here is in business suits. This isn't the right place for martial arts. You are going to scare a bunch of people and we are going to get a lot of calls about you"

"fucking bullshit" speaking to no one,

Suddenly he bladed his body to me and raised to stick as if the strike and said "Well, how about I hit you with it?"

The stick was big. It was about 2 inches thick and I could now see that it was actually a stylized walking stick about 5 feet long and made of hickory with a hole drilled in the handle for a leather lanyard. It looked hard and as my hands came up in front of me and I backed away nothing else mattered at that moment; not my cross-country vacation, bargaining meetings, or the overtime procedure proposal. He had a fire in his eyes and at that moment I really thought I was about to be killed or seriously injured.

My instincts were to run but my brain told me to attack, they blamed each other for the situation. My body betrayed me by backing away because the best place to fight someone with a stick is inside the swing, but my brain betrayed my body by misreading the situation. Neither of these thoughts were helpful.

I reached for my radio and backed away to a flagpole which was about 20 feet behind me, it was my only cover for 100 feet in any direction. I struggled with how to present this situation because while it would be great to have my whole team there with me, I also knew that I was putting people in danger by calling them. This job may occasionally be dangerous by nature but I felt like I fucked this one up and made it worse. I calmly advised my dispatch to call the police and indicated he was threatening me with the stick. I found out later that I was so calm that they didn't hear any stress in my voice which is the sign of a good radio call but also sometimes doesn't yield the results you want.

He swung at the air to intimidate me, it worked. Then he started backing away from me towards the street tapping the stick on the ground and challenging me the whole time. I saw a police vehicle parked on the street but he was between me and the vehicle and I couldn't tell if there was anyone inside. It was a pickup truck with a horse trailer attached to it. I stood by the flagpole while he made his way to the street and as soon as he reached the police vehicle, I sprinted for it.

I stuck my head through the window and found 2 cops eating their lunch. They were startled and seemed to have been taken out of a nice casual conversation. I pointed out the male which was now walking through the middle of traffic in front of us challenging cars and swinging the stick around. I told them that he threatened me with it and to be careful. They told me that they would look into it and wanted to observe him for a bit first because he looked "a little crazy" (no shit).

As I walked away, I could see the pickup merge into traffic to follow him. I returned to Mike who was on the phone and had no idea what had just transpired. Several of my guards came running from all directions to see if I needed help but it was all over and I had a meeting to attend.

Mike and I walked into the meeting fashionably late and I was a bit distracted as I wrote down everything that I could remember in case the police came to ask me later. I don't recall anything from that meeting.

The police arrived an hour later to get a statement and video surveillance of the incident but due to the angle and distance of the camera it didn't show much. This was a different PC from the ones I talked to in the pickup, she told me that they followed him down the street and when confronted he came at them with the stick. They drew their guns and called 10-33 but since they were not familiar with the area they didn't know where they were and police all over the city were driving around looking for them. In the end he was taken into custody and was in violation of conditions on several priors for assault and weapons. It felt validating but inconsequential that even the police had to call for help with him at gun point.

That night at home as I got ready to leave early in the morning for the airport, I didn't know quite how to explain this event to my wife. If there is a way to reveal the stress of a dangerous situation experienced at work to your closest loved ones without scaring them, I'm not familiar with it. I've never been good at walking that line, but there is a necessity to get the stories out.

A lot of people struggle to find the words to accurately convey feelings but there is no word I could use to tell you how I felt at that moment. I feared for myself and my team, I felt betrayed by my perception, I felt ashamed of my fear, I felt like I had failed myself by missing an opportunity to attack, I felt victimized, and I felt weak and pathetic. And as I failed to accurately explain my feelings to my wife that night as she was busy rushing around our home getting things ready for the morning, I felt alone.

That night I drank Jack Daniels on the balcony of our two-bedroom apartment and wished to forget, but I didn't.

What did I learn? - You can't project your desire for a relaxing day onto the world and expect it to happen. The world doesn't care if you are busy or have vacation planned, it keeps turning. If you are doing something that requires your full attention, then give it your full attention. Being nice to someone doesn't mean letting your guard down. You cannot unexperience events, you can only learn and grow from them.