What would you do?

Last Thursday something interesting happened to me. Well nothing really happened to me but I was witness to something quite interesting and it made me think. It was a holiday here where I live and I had decided to go along for a ride with my father and his girlfriend, they were off to the local shopping centre to pick up some things that they needed. I didn’t have anything better to do so I decided to go with them. It was a nice day outside and the sun was shining. When we arrived at the shopping centre our first trip was to the electronics store which wasn’t actually located in the mall but just outside of it. We went inside to search for empty disc cases and a print cartridge for their printer. Being that I didn’t really have a reason to be there I just wondered around gawking at amazing pieces of flashy equipment that I would never have a need nor a use for. After coming to the conclusion that almost everything in the store was way out of my price range I decided I would go outside and wait for them in the beautiful light of day. I stood out side the door for maybe a minute or two and got impatient as I usually do, so I snuck back in just to take a peek at where they were. They were already through the check out and on their way out of the store. As the three of us walked out of the store together we saw three employees of another store that was just up the street come shooting past us at full speed. Up ahead of the employees there was a young man dressed in jeans and a jean jacket doing everything he could to get away from them. It was a full out foot pursuit. As the employees gained on the young man it seemed as if he had given up, he stopped running and the store employees had caught him. The four men turned around and began to walk back towards the store that they had originally come from. I assumed that they were headed back to call the police and to return the goods that the young man had obviously stolen. As the four individuals approached the area where we were standing, I noticed that the store employees weren’t even holding the man they had been chasing nor were they even paying much attention to him and on top of that the man was on his cell phone. That struck me as a little odd and sure enough my feeling was right. Just before they reached where we were standing the man took off at full speed again, this time heading towards the road where a car was waiting for him with the back door open. The store employees bolted after him again. The young thief dove into the car but not before the employees grabbed a hold of him. As the men tried their hardest to pull him back out of the vehicle the other men in the car tried their hardest to hold on. After about a minute of brawling inside the vehicle I guess the driver decided enough was enough and he hit the gas, running over the foot of one of the store employee’s. Although that was the end of this event for the young thief and the store employees, it wasn’t the end of it for me and the questions I was asking myself.

As the day progressed I realized something interesting, I realized that if it weren’t for my impatience that day I would have had a very important decision to make. If I hadn’t gone back into the store to see where my father and his girlfriend were, that thief would have ran right past me with the store employee’s directly in pursuit and it would have been obvious that he had done something wrong. What burnt my brain about this was that I couldn’t figure out for myself if I would have done something about it. Would I have taken it upon myself to lay the smack down on this guy thus becoming the hero of the day or would I have simply watched as they flew past me. Is it really worth it to get involved in a situation such as this? Was I even capable of making a split second decision like I would have had to had I been standing out there? These were all questions that ran through my head later that day. The more I thought about it the more I wondered. It has now been a few days since this event and I still haven’t come to any conclusion. I don’t think that the problem lies in the situation it self, I am almost certain that I would have tried to lend a helping hand and gracefully or not so gracefully would have attempted to tackle the guy. The problem that I face is that I don’t know if I am capable of making a decision like that in that amount of time. Some of us may be blessed with this split second decision making and for the rest of us I think it takes time and effort to be able to train ourselves to make decisions quickly. Life is full of decisions and choices we have to make and I think if we work hard at learning how to make good decisions quickly we can all make life a little easier for ourselves. One must tread carefully under these circumstances though. We don’t want to just make all of our life decisions on the whim; we want to train ourselves to make these decisions carefully and accurately while still doing it with haste. It’s a talent that takes many years of practice. So the next time you find yourself with a decision to make that’s burning your brain try to think about what could help you speed up the process but if you find that difficult don’t worry, so do I and many others.

Jesse Roulette
Catching bad guys One at a Time