The night that my jacket possibly saved my life. A true story by Bluelightbandit.

The other day I had the pleasure of having an in depth conversation with @natureofbeing. We talked about many interesting things and one topic being how we both attracted unwanted attention sometimes.

Okay, I sugar coated the part about unwanted attention because the sentence involved @natureofbeing. Ya see, I'm a shit magnet and I can attract shit from any direction at any time. It always seems like trouble finds me whether I want it or not. Most of my stories and incidents are violent in nature. It's been this way my entire life, as a child, as an officer of the law to just sitting in my own house just minding my own business...it always seems to find me and when it does, it's usually a good one.

Well, we switched a few stories and I think the next day or something, I will be damned if something else didn't happen. I told her something happened but didn't go in to detail, I told her I would make a post about it. Well, that was before Christmas! Sorry again @natureofbeing, that's twice now I have kept you waiting. But I'm sure you've been standing by just holding your breath with anticipation, right? Lol! My memory is getting worse each day ma'am. Anyway, back to the story.

This particular incident occurred on or around Christmas Eve. My wife and I had went to see her parents that live in Greensboro, North Carolina. Greensboro has some very violent areas with high crime rates. They've already got a murder or two for the year. Prior to getting to her parents house, we stopped at a convenient store or a "stop & rob" as some cops call it to buy some alcohol. The place was very busy! I told my wife to stay in the car and keep the door locked and to blow the horn if she needs me.

Well, I walk in to the store like any other person would but I could sense that I was being stared at. To try and paint a better picture for you, there were probably 20 people inside and outside of the store just kind of standing around with hoods on. I was the only white person and the only person without a hood on in the entire store, so I stuck out pretty bad. Environments like this do not rattle my cage or make me nervous, or if they do, I don't show it. I use to work undercover in narcotics before so if I can walk in to a crack house with armed drug dealers and keep my cool, a convenient store ain't nuttin.

As I'm paying for the drinks, (I'm also keeping an eye on my wife in the car) one of the clerks walks behind me and locks the door. There's a door on the side and one on the front, he locked the side door. I thought something was wrong or was about to go down so I looked at him with the most sincerity and said talk to me, whats going on? He said nothing, that they just lock that side door at dark for security reasons. Apparently it's convenient when people rob the place.

As I'm walking out of the store, a young black male with a hoodie on (just described everyone in the store) stopped me and asked me about my jacket. My wife looked terrified and just knew something was getting ready to happen and to be honest I did too. I wasn't scared but I felt like this young man didnt give a damn about my jacket and he has an alternate motive for stopping me.

He said that he really liked it and that he has seen a lot of people wearing that same kind around and he was wondering where I got it. Now as he said this, I noticed that he took a half-step closer to me which was a half-step too close, so I pivoted in to a bladed defensive stance and was expecting the worse. But without missing a beat, I started to reveal my jackets special little secrets. As I flip each one out, I'm saying "I wish I could help you out buddy but the department that I work for issued this to me and I'm not sure where they got it, but maybe there's a tag somewhere on here that can help?"

The look on his face was priceless and his interest in my jacket quickly faded away. He said thanks and walked off. I got in the car and my wife @carolina-girl said "What in the hell just happened?" I laughed and just said that I think my jacket just saved someones life.

Now I don't know for sure what his intentions were but I do have pretty good street smarts and I know damn well he hasn't seen a bunch of people wearing that same jacket. Stopping someone and engaging with them in a conversation is usually the first step to a hustle or robbery. If I hadn't had done that, who knows what would have happened. I may have wound up un the hospital, he may have wound up in the hospital or we both may have ended up there. Or hell, we might would have become best friends! But as I was playing around with my ID tags, my gun hand was inches away from this....

If you haven't figured it out already, this jacket was designed for law enforcement and has cool little hidden compartments to keep guns-n-stuff.

And if for some reason that little guy was not appropriate at the right spot at the right time, my edc would be at ready.

This jacket is several years old and I don't even know if they make it anymore. It's a nice jacket and well made. It's weather proof as you can tell by the zippers.

It even has little compartments on each arm for even more surprise ID tags. Here's a picture of the back of the jacket, I didn't pull this one out lol.

When I was telling her parents this story, they said that particular store gets robbed several times. When we got home later that night, we both saw on the news that two convenient stores were robbed at gun point in Greensboro while we were down there and one of them was the store that we were at!

I'm telling ya now...stay away from me lol. Unless you're an adrenaline junkie or want something possibly exciting to happen because I can attract the best of the best!