Episode Twenty-Four: The Byte - Paul Black

Running into a hitman really wasn't part of Paul's plan after his end-of-school party. In this byte-sized episode hear the story of how he saved both him and his date's lives. From his quick reaction time to a sloped driveway-everything was on his side.

Transcript

In front of a large,

Huge kind of Twitter mansion-ish kind of home,

This guy was doing a car,

Was turfing the yard.

But what was unusual was the light was on inside the cabin of the car,

So you could see the occupants.

This kind of Sopranos-esque,

Wise-guy-ish looking guy with greasy,

Slick back hair and his beehive hairdo girlfriend.

And they're turfing this yard.

He spins it around to his nose-to-nose with us,

And we're probably about 20 feet apart.

And we can see everything that's going on in the cabin.

And I'm like,

I look to Ann,

And she's like,

What the hell is going on?

What is this?

The girl is at his arm,

Tugging him not to do something.

And he's all pissed off and throws it in park and goes to the glove compartment and steps out and walks in front of the car.

He hits this combat stance and aims a gun at us.

And Ann goes,

Oh,

My God,

I think he's got a gun.

I jam it,

Reverse and floor it.

In our Rockwellian suburb that we lived in in Hinsdale,

This is a 1975,

To give you some clarity of time frame.

And,

Again,

In my high school career was centered around academics and gymnastics,

Mostly gymnastics.

I went out on a day,

First-time date with a girl.

And we went to a end-of-the-year,

Senior-year party kegger basher at someone's home.

And toward the end of the night,

And I never drank that much in high school,

We were bored with the parties.

So she goes,

Hey,

You want to go see what her dad was an architect,

Pretty well-known architect in the town or in the Chicago area and did residential.

And she goes,

You want to go look at some homes he's just completed,

Which I think was code for you want to go next somewhere,

Which was great.

And I was like,

Yes,

Ma'am.

It was in southern part of our town,

Which was a little more rural or whatever,

But larger lots and more wooded and that type of thing.

And these were pretty big homes.

We were coming up a hill in a wooded area.

These streets did not have curbs.

They were soft shoulders.

In front of a large,

Huge kind of Twitter mansion-ish kind of home,

This guy was doing a car,

Was turfing the yard,

Which in of itself is not that unusual,

But odd.

But what was unusual was the light was on inside the cabin of the car so you could see the occupants,

This kind of Sopranos-esque wise guy-ish looking guy with greasy slick back hair and his beehive hairdo girlfriend.

And they're turfing this yard in this kind of nondescript sedan of the time period.

And he comes flying off the front yard and cuts me off at the top of this little kind of hill that we were coming up to.

And it's late at night,

Probably midnight.

He spins it around to his nose to nose with us and we're probably about 20 feet apart and we can see everything that's going on in the cabin.

And I'm like,

I look to Ann and she's like,

What the hell is going on?

What is this?

And I can't get around him because he's in the middle of the road.

It's a narrow road.

And the girl is at his arm,

Tugging him not to do something.

And he's all pissed off and throws it in park and goes to the glove compartment and steps out and walks in front of the car.

And now he's a silhouette because of his headlights.

And he hits this combat stance and aims a gun at us.

And Ann goes,

Oh my God,

I think he's got a gun.

And I push her down in the seat.

We have bucket seats in this particular car,

Sedan,

My mom's car,

We're in.

And I jam it reverse and scrunch down and floor it.

And this guy unloads his clip into our car as we careen back down the hill,

Veer off the road,

Hit a drain pipe and embankment kind of thing and become airborne and fly through a hedge of bushes and land in a front yard of a ranch style home,

A big long front yard,

Can see through the hedge of the path,

I just of destruction I just made and see the guy,

You know,

Pop the clip out,

Dig out of his pocket,

Another clip,

Slam it like out of a movie,

You know,

Out of a slasher movie in this imposing figure,

All silhouetted,

You know,

From his headlights,

Throw another clip into the gun and come trotting down the road toward us.

The car is damaged.

The gear shift is damaged.

It's stuck in drive.

It's digging and kind of in reverse in the front yard.

And I can't get out of my door because the hedge that I just plowed through is smashed up against my driver's side door and opens her door.

I said,

Go,

Get out,

Get to that house,

Run.

Because now it's,

You know,

This guy obviously is out to kill us.

I mean,

He's out to finish the job he did not do.

And I mean,

Bullets went flying through the cabin and hitting the windshield and pinging off and whizzing by and,

And jumps out of the car.

I crawl over the council,

We're running up the front yard,

Jumping onto this guy,

You know,

Running on this guy's driveway or this family's driveway,

Running around the side of the home to the back door of this ranch style home.

We both leaped over.

She was a track person,

You know,

So she like leaped over the little hedge around the patio,

You know,

Like a,

Like a sprinter,

You know,

And we come up to the back door and it has windows,

Eight pane windows.

I smashed one in,

Reach around,

Unlock the door and like literally go in because we were freaking out at this time because we didn't know if this guy was like running after us.

I didn't stop to look.

We just hauled ass.

We break into this home and it's the kitchen,

Pitch black in the house.

All the while,

I'm literally screaming at the top of my lungs,

Please don't hurt us.

Please don't hurt us.

Save us.

We're like being shot at.

Please help us.

There,

There's this guy who walks in.

I can see a shadow in the kitchen.

You know,

He's like,

Just get out of my house.

Like,

Sir,

Sir,

Sir,

Please,

You've got to help us.

There's a person that's trying to kill us.

He's been shooting,

Shooting,

You know,

And like freaking out.

And this guy reaches into a drawer and I can't see him well,

Cause he's,

It's all dark and he's a dark figure.

He reaches in and he pulls a knife out,

You know,

Big butcher knife.

And he's like walking up to me,

Like with it aimed at me.

And I'm literally like crouching going,

Sir,

Please,

You know,

I've got my hands like in front of me,

Pleading,

Please help us.

Cause I don't,

I,

We can't leave.

This guy's out to kill us.

And,

Anne has been trying to find a light switch and she hits the light switch,

Finally finds it,

Like going along the wall,

You know,

Cause it's super dark and the guy is buck naked and Anne's like,

Whoa,

You know,

She puts her hands over her eyes and turns around and the guy's like over me with the knife now.

And he's like,

He's like,

Oh shit.

So as you kind of have thought about this incident over the years,

And as you've gotten older,

Do you ever replay it in your mind and think,

My God,

All of the things that had to go right for us to escape and,

And be alive?

Well,

That's a very good segue because when I went back and did a little research,

I researched near-death experiences and what happens during a near-death experience.

And why does your perspective slow down into slow motion?

Because it did for me in the car and the,

The,

The,

The medical theories behind it are that the brain does this.

And there's a lot of studies on it,

Obviously a lot with soldiers,

You know,

A lot with people who are,

Who have crashed a plane and lived to tell about it or whatever.

When you are in a hyper intense situation,

When adrenaline is flooding,

The medical theory behind it is,

Is that the brain it's a,

Not prehistoric,

But it is a,

That kind of part of our brains click on and perspective as it comes back into the brain from our senses is actually slowed down by the brain in order for you to do the right things,

To perceive and put the car in gear and push and down and scrunch down and hit the accelerator and watch out the side window.

If you're actually driving semi-straight and all of those things,

It,

It,

Your brain does this to give you a fighting chance to survive.

It's instinctual.

It's a survival instinctual mechanism that your brain clicks into for four seconds,

One second,

Two seconds,

Enough to make you dodge the whatever,

The lion that's coming to eat you.

I can tell you it works.

It exists.

It happens.

It does happen.

And that's what the cop said too.

The other cop goes,

Man,

A lot of people would freeze up and go,

You know,

And then bang,

Bang,

Bang,

Bang,

Bang,

And you'd be dead.

You just went click,

Click,

Click,

Boom,

Down and hit it.

You know,

He goes,

You had to have done it so fast because his reaction time to fire the rounds off takes a second.

Cause he was lifting the pistol up in a combat stance,

Like a cop would both hands on the,

On the gun.

I mean,

This guy probably was ex-military or whatever,

But no,

He was,

He wasn't just shooting cause he was drunk or whatever.

He was like,

I'm going to kill you.

He was a pro.

He was a pro.

That's what the guys with the detectives that he goes hit man,

Pro.

But do you ever look at what happened that night as a miracle?

No,

I don't.

I personally think of miracles as what Jesus did in the sense of a blind man touches eyes.

He can see.

I mean,

That's,

That's a miracle.

Yeah.

I know I don't look at it as a miracle.

I look,

If there was a miracle,

I reacted very quickly.

Maybe if we want to drill down and pinpoint intervention a intervention of a God-like thing.

Yes.

That God gave me the wherewithal or I was born with the instinctual reflection,

Reflexive ability to do in those four seconds,

The things that I needed to do.

Okay.

Maybe there's the little miracle you could go.

All right.

God gave you the opportunity and I took it.

I acted,

I ran,

I put us in reverse.

I got us out of harm's way.

Now God may have,

If we want to talk this way,

Gave me that little four second,

You know,

Break.

And then it's up to me.

It's up to me and Ann.

One of the things that I'm thinking of,

You know,

Just listening to your story and for me,

You know,

And you discussed it already,

You already said it that you responded so quickly in that four or five seconds and think of you and,

You know,

If we want to use the term God and how you were created and there's that saying,

You know,

I am fearfully and wonderfully made and God made you into an elite athlete.

I mean,

You were absolutely,

You know,

At that time at your prime or getting into your prime of being just at this level that pretty much most humans on the planet aren't able to be in.

And so the miracle for me is that you,

You are this elite athlete.

You are like the person that needed to be there in that moment because you were able to respond so quickly and get the both of you out of trouble.

I just,

That's just what I think.

I think it's like,

Oh my gosh,

If I'm being shot at by a hit man who has maybe a death warrant out on the president,

When I happen to stumble across him,

I want someone who has the abilities of Spider-Man at my side.

This has been episode 24 of Bite Sized Blessings,

The podcast all about the magic and spirit that surrounds us.

If only we open our eyes to it and whether you choose to listen to our Bite Sized offerings for that five to 10 minutes of freedom in your day or the longer interviews,

We're grateful you're here.

I need to thank the author,

Paul Black for sharing his story today,

As well as the creators of the music used,

Raphael Crux,

Kevin MacLeod,

Alexander Nakarada,

And Agniese Fomagia.

For complete attribution,

Please see the Bite Sized Blessings website at bite-sized-blessings.

Com.

On the website,

You'll find links to other episodes,

To books,

Music,

And change makers I think will lift and inspire you.

Thank you for listening.

And here's my one request.

Be like Paul,

Embrace science and the truth while still being open to the mystery.

Thank you.