BANG!

 

The loud blast resounded around the warehouse-like grocery store moments after I walked in the store.

I froze.

"It was a balloon, it's alright," someone called. A manager raced by me, calling that he was double-checking that it was, indeed, not a gunshot. (I consider it somewhat heroic that he headed toward the sound.)

The store sells helium balloons, and one had burst. In that cavernous building, it sounded like a .22 caliber gun going off.

It was a loud echo chamber, the noise bouncing off the ceiling like a bird hitting a glass door.

It upset me more than I realized. Mostly, I was upset at my reaction. Some, like me, simply stood, but other people ducked behind vegetable crates.

I was in a section with nowhere to go, nothing to duck behind.

I was vulnerable.

So, I am happy today that I didn't get shot yesterday.

But I am terribly pissed off that this is where we are, that I came home angry, frightened, and upset because a helium balloon burst in the supermarket.

Terrified that I know now that when the gunman enters the store, I'll be among the first to go, because I froze in panic instead of running.

I try to tell myself that on some level I knew it was a balloon, that I had just walked by there, and my subconscious had noted someone using the helium tank.

But the reality is that I froze, and now I wonder if I need to practice not freezing at such sounds, practice hustling my fat ass out of the way, around a corner, falling to the ground knowing that with my bad back and my pudgy body I probably wouldn't get up again without help. I think about how embarrassing that would have been, had I overreacted . . . this time.

Because this time, it wasn't a gunshot.

I am happy about that.