The Fight or Flight Response Has a Third Option.

Okay so that’s not entirely true. I think the Taurus was closer to teal. Or turquoise. You know what, now that I’m looking those up I’m going to say that it definitely was teal.

If it had been turquoise, that would have made me think of my birthday since turquoise is my birth stone. And that would have made me think of that time that I had to buy my own birthday cake because nobody wanted to buy me one because they said I was too old for birthday cake.

And I was like, that’s stupid. You can’t be too old for a food group. So then I went to the grocery store and bought my own cake for $40 and ate the entire thing in front of everyone at the party.

So yeah, the car was teal.

So this teal car was driving like 3 or 4 cars behind us, irritated that we were holding up traffic. So they decided to pass the whole lot of us, and began driving on the opposite side of the road. Unaware that this was happening, I began to take a left turn.

That’s when my friend screamed my name.

I slammed on my brakes and watched in horror as the other car swerved at the last second to miss us. You’d think swerving to avoid completely obliterating another car would be their best move.

And in most cases you’d be right. If only they hadn’t driven off a cliff immediately afterwards.

You might be asking yourself what my first reaction was upon watching a car full of people fly off the edge of a cliff.

“Am I in a Bruce Willis movie?”

That wasn’t the first thing I said out loud, though. The first thing I said out loud was:

“So…should we just leave?”

Which, in fairness, is an appropriate response from someone like me. Someone who purposely tripped an 11 year old in the produce aisle so I could steal grapes.

In my defense, that’s called misdirection and nobody gets mad when a magician does it.

Unfortunately, my friend had a conscience. So we drove down the side of the road that ran along the cliff to look for the car. It didn’t take too long to spot it. I mean, there weren’t really any other cars with 4 flat tires in the middle of a corn field.

At this point I should mention that I thought the people in that car were dead. I mean, I know I didn’t do anything wrong. I know I didn’t kill them, per se. I wasn’t driving on the wrong side of the road. I hadn’t ruined some poor farmer’s crops.

I still felt like I should be sad, though. Not for like a super long time, but a respectable amount. Like a week. Okay, not a week, that’s insane. Maybe like 3 days.

While I continued to second guess the appropriate amount of time to mourn complete strangers, the front doors shot open and two enormous men scrambled out.

“Fuck! Fuck! What the fuck! What the fuck!!!!”

A moment later, the backseat of the car swung open and a large, angry woman got out. I’m being what they call “politically correct” when I use the term angry.

If I weren’t so in tune with being PC, I might have described her as say, a fucking nut job.

She echoed the same sentiment as her male counterparts about the fucks and the overall sensation of flying through the air. But unlike her friends, she sought out the person responsible for their short-lived time as an airplane.

So up the hill she comes, yelling the entire time:

“Who be drivin’ this car?! Who the fuck be drivin’ this car?!”

Now she’s directly in my face, still screaming. I remember thinking that in that moment, it’d be important to contain my composure.

Apparently screaming back, “I BE DRIVIN’ THAT CAR!” did not translate to composed woman responding to nut job.

When we learned about the fight or flight response in school, it was our science teacher that explained this physiological phenomenon.

And right before this lesson, she had told us how she regularly drank breast milk because it was nutritious and much sweeter than regular milk. And after someone tells you that, it’s really hard to pay attention to anything else they’re saying afterwards.

Now that I think about it, breast milk is a pretty good example of a food group that you’re too old for. So I guess I was wrong about that, but not about having a cake on your birthday. What is the purpose of a birthday beyond rage eating an entire ice cream cake?

So it’s not really my fault that, if there were a third option mentioned, I completely missed it. I, however, learned it on the streets. Just like my sweet hip-hop moves.

See, the third option — the often overlooked option — isn’t to fight or flight but rather stand there and let a fucking lunatic choke the life out of you.