Eye-opening conversation
Have you ever had the experience when someone makes a passing comment about their past that TOTALLY surprises you? It happened tonight to me.
There's a guy at our church the girls and I have spoken with because he's into martial arts, too. He's a fourth degree black belt, but in a different discipline than ours, so we've never taken classes with him; I'm hazy about what, exactly, he studies. I've been told by several people that he's extremely good. He's offered self-defense classes for women for free to church members upon occasion. I knew that he's worked for the city for the past twenty years or so. Something to do with programming traffic lights, I think.
Tonight, we went to the Lenten Soup Supper and sat down next to Jeff and struck up a conversation with him. He's a really nice, friendly guy. I told him about Fiona's form at school yesterday, and the conversation was friendly and lively, meandering from topic to topic. And then, out of the blue--I can't remember how on earth we got to that point--he said casually, "You know that I used to snatch people to deprogram them from cults, didn't you?"
My jaw dropped. "Really?!"
"Oh, yeah," he said casually. "I was the muscle. My job was to grab them and throw them in the van and then keep them from leaving. I rescued about a hundred people over the years. I only lost one who went back."
He then spent about a half hour telling us the most amazing stories about the period of time from when he was eighteen till he was twenty-eight. He'd fly all over the country, paid by the target's parents, to snatch them. He snatched people from the Moonies, Scientology, The Way, and other more obscure splinter cults. He told us about the time he and his partner flew to Chicago because they knew the kid was going to a wedding. So they grabbed the kid, but they didn't realize that EVERYBODY in the wedding was involved in the cult. So the entire wedding party turned on them, but he still managed to get out of there, carrying the kid on his back, kicking and screaming and clawing all the way. "Girls were the worst," he said, "'cause they'd be especially scared. I mean, here I was, this big guy grabbing them out of the blue and they didn't know why until I threw them in the van and they saw their parents there. And I wasn't allowed to hurt them, of course."
"Did any of them ever injure you?" I asked, fascinated.
"Nah, because they didn't know what they were doing, exactly. Not the way guys did when I fought them in cage matches."
And THAT led to stories about his fighting career. He fought in Madison Square Garden. He was a bouncer in a bar. He's had his nose broken so many times he had the cartilage replaced with plastic. He was a bodyguard to celebrities, the chief one, the one of last resort, closest to the stage. He said Tina Turner, for example, always asks for him when she comes to town.
I couldn't help but marvel. Here's this nice guy who sits in the pew behind us every week, who's talked about reading his Bible on the bus on the way to work each day, who had this whole other wild life and I knew nothing about it.
Tell me about someone you've known for awhile who took you totally by surprise with amazing stories about their past.
There's a guy at our church the girls and I have spoken with because he's into martial arts, too. He's a fourth degree black belt, but in a different discipline than ours, so we've never taken classes with him; I'm hazy about what, exactly, he studies. I've been told by several people that he's extremely good. He's offered self-defense classes for women for free to church members upon occasion. I knew that he's worked for the city for the past twenty years or so. Something to do with programming traffic lights, I think.
Tonight, we went to the Lenten Soup Supper and sat down next to Jeff and struck up a conversation with him. He's a really nice, friendly guy. I told him about Fiona's form at school yesterday, and the conversation was friendly and lively, meandering from topic to topic. And then, out of the blue--I can't remember how on earth we got to that point--he said casually, "You know that I used to snatch people to deprogram them from cults, didn't you?"
My jaw dropped. "Really?!"
"Oh, yeah," he said casually. "I was the muscle. My job was to grab them and throw them in the van and then keep them from leaving. I rescued about a hundred people over the years. I only lost one who went back."
He then spent about a half hour telling us the most amazing stories about the period of time from when he was eighteen till he was twenty-eight. He'd fly all over the country, paid by the target's parents, to snatch them. He snatched people from the Moonies, Scientology, The Way, and other more obscure splinter cults. He told us about the time he and his partner flew to Chicago because they knew the kid was going to a wedding. So they grabbed the kid, but they didn't realize that EVERYBODY in the wedding was involved in the cult. So the entire wedding party turned on them, but he still managed to get out of there, carrying the kid on his back, kicking and screaming and clawing all the way. "Girls were the worst," he said, "'cause they'd be especially scared. I mean, here I was, this big guy grabbing them out of the blue and they didn't know why until I threw them in the van and they saw their parents there. And I wasn't allowed to hurt them, of course."
"Did any of them ever injure you?" I asked, fascinated.
"Nah, because they didn't know what they were doing, exactly. Not the way guys did when I fought them in cage matches."
And THAT led to stories about his fighting career. He fought in Madison Square Garden. He was a bouncer in a bar. He's had his nose broken so many times he had the cartilage replaced with plastic. He was a bodyguard to celebrities, the chief one, the one of last resort, closest to the stage. He said Tina Turner, for example, always asks for him when she comes to town.
I couldn't help but marvel. Here's this nice guy who sits in the pew behind us every week, who's talked about reading his Bible on the bus on the way to work each day, who had this whole other wild life and I knew nothing about it.
Tell me about someone you've known for awhile who took you totally by surprise with amazing stories about their past.