When Faced With A Crisis, Cover Your Eyes and Slowly Back Away.

This is horrible advice. Please don't follow it. Please don't be like me.

I feel like I stay pretty calm in crazy situations. I don't flail around and freak out. In fact, I usually get quieter and calmer as the situation escalates. Usually.

The other day, though, I got a different view of myself. Now I know for sure, as if I even had a desire to do so, that I wasn't meant to be a nurse, a rescue worker of any kind, someone who deals with life and death situations, or that I should ever meet a mugger in a dark alley.

I learned that when faced with a fearful situation I just cover my eyes and slowly back away. Yup. I'm  a big time whimp. I think my husband already knew that, actually.

The hubs and I went for a day date. We do those a lot since he works the swing shift. We decided to go for a hike at a beautiful park in our town.

It was such a nice hike, good weather, great conversation. We saw a plethora of wildlife, two woodpeckers, deer, some wild turkeys, birds, even a little harmless garter snake. We stopped by the small lake in the park and had a very nice picnic lunch.

We headed back and was making our way down the trail, through the shady forest. The light was filtering in through the trees and we had just spotted another woodpecker looking for his lunch in a tree trunk.

We were talking and laughing and in a second's time I looked down and froze. Not a foot away from me was a snake. Not a little harmless garter snake. An honest to goodness "you're supposed to be behind glass" snake. I didn't know, until a few minutes later, that it was rattle snake.

Did I say, "Hon, look out!"? No.

Or, "Holy cow, that's a snake!" Nope.

Or maybe just, "Ahhhh!!!" Not a bit.

I made a bit of a muffled screech, covered my eyes and slowly back up the trail.

Thankfully, Andy saw the snake right away and, of course, stayed to have a looksy and take a picture. I high-tailed it about twenty feet back up the trail and peeked from behind a tree. Honestly, I did.

The rattler didn't move. It just stayed there. Andy threw some sticks at it to get it to move along. It coiled up and rattled it's menacing rattles. (I only heard this part because I was too far away to actually see anything.)

It finally moved and  we gingerly made our way down the path.

Is this how I react in a crisis?

I hope if a loved one was in real danger I would be quicker on my feet and little braver.

At the end of the day, the experience made for a great story and just confirmed what I always knew to be true. I'm a big scaredy cat!