Commentary
What I Learned From (Almost) Being Kidnapped
- by Kaila Colbin , Featured Contributor, December 29, 2023
When I was four years old, I was the subject of an attempted kidnapping.
It wasn’t one of those well-organized kidnap-for-ransom type deals; it was just random bad luck.
At the time, I was chomping at the bit to be more independent. At that age, you can’t do anything by yourself -- and I HATED it.
My mom, being an open-minded
kind of parent, made a deal with me: While she did the grocery shopping, I was allowed to wait at the door to the supermarket.
So there I was, standing in the doorway, when a guy
came up to me, crouched down, held out his arms, and said, “It’s Pa! It’s Pa!”
He was maybe in his 20s or 30s, with long unkempt hair, no shoes, socks
flapping against the sidewalk. He was most certainly not my Pa.
“No,” I said, and walked a few feet to the other side of the entrance.
He came
after me, crouched down again, held out his arms again. “It’s Pa, it’s Pa,” he insisted.
“NO,” I said again. And then he picked me up and started
running.
I started screaming. My mother, with superhuman Mother Senses, heard me from the bowels of the store. She came out and sprinted after us. Caught up to us. Grabbed my heel,
but my shoe came off in her hand. She tripped and fell, twisting her ankle badly.
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My kidnapper kept running. I kept screaming.
All of a sudden, he stopped dead.
At the far end of the block, a crowd had gathered -- and these were no mere onlookers. They formed a human barrier, arms crossed, making it clear that this was not going to happen on
their watch.
He turned to cross the street -- but, there, another crowd was also blocking his way.
It was like that scene in “Spider-Man”: “You mess with one of us, you mess with all of us!”
My kidnapper turned to go back the way he came -- and ran straight into my mom and the cops.
Not gonna lie, it was a terrifying ordeal. I had nightmares for years afterwards.
But my takeaway wasn’t only about the fear.
Being (almost) kidnapped taught me that there are people in the world who will do bad things, people I have to be
careful of.
But it also taught me that, for every one person who may do me harm, there are hundreds more who will help.
It taught me that I can ask for that help
-- even from strangers.
It taught me that the world can be a pretty inspiring place.
This holiday season, I hope you’re surrounded by love and support, that
you are inspired by the people around you.
Thank you for welcoming me into your feed this year. See you in 2024.
That is a powerful and inspiring story, Kaila. Thank you for sharing it with us.
Coincidentally, I was reading one of Bill Harvey's blog posts this morning about the concept of "Noia" (the opposite of paranoia), which I hope you don't mind me adding as a comment here, because I think most people are wired to think fearfully about others (often with good reason), but the other is also true.
Noia
By Bill Harvey
Powerful Mind Part 42
Created December 29, 2023
Read Powerful Mind 41
In the 1970s I coined the term “Noia” as the opposite of paranoia when I discovered that the prefix “para” derives from the Greek meaning of “beside”. What is beside paranoia, I asked myself. Paranoia is the unhealthy fear that someone/everyone is out to get you. I decided that “noia” then might be the healthy suspicion the someone is out to help you.
The reason I was thinking this way is that by the 1970s I had noticed that often information was coming to me seemingly by accident that was unusually relevant to my current life situation at the time. I would be trying to solve some problem, for example, and since I almost always have music on, a line in a song would come along at just the right moment to bear an uncanny resemblance to my line of thought.
This can be easily explained as random coincidence aided by priming effect and being observant. Priming effect is the increase in saliency of a stimulus to a person caused by a prior stimulus.
However, it did not seem like random coincidence to me because it occurred too often. It seemed more like someone who could read my thoughts and feelings was trying to help me reach my goals. Since my goals have always been to leave the world a better place than I found it, perhaps the universe is trying to help me because I am trying to help the universe, I thought.
Looking back at my life through that lens as a way of further studying the phenomenon, it appeared that I had been given the most open-minded and compassionate parents possible, and gifted with an independence of thought, and lucky in so many ways. I also saw that my love of science had blinded me to consider that there might be a germ of truth in religion and/or in other superstitious behaviors, as I thought of magic, reincarnation, and so many other things.
Having the label of “noia” to slap on things was useful to me in prying open my mind to pay closer attention and not to filter or bias what I perceived by having strong preconceived notions. I started to notice how frequently each day I experienced noiac events.
Thanks Kaila. Keep the insights coming in '24.
Ken Fadner
A harrowing ordeal for certain. Thanks for sharing such a personal story.
Thank you Kaila for your bravery to re-tell that terrible incident.