Story as requested by @chqoswood
I guess I'll do the most interesting one that comes to mind, which is when I was threatened with a knife while on a trip to Canada
It was a school trip. I was with a group of people- three of my friends, two in my grade and my Drum Major, (who will be labelled as DM. He's important), and DM's mom. We were somewhere in Montréal, and went to a McDonald's for lunch (despite all the. Cafes and whatever. I don't know why) and it was TINY, LOUD, AND CRAMPED. Like, there was a lot of people in there.
So. Anxiety ridden Brass is having a panic /overstimulation attack. We're all ordering at kiosks and I beg my friend to stay next to me. She immediately leaves. Granted, they were only about 15 feet away and I could see them, but I needed someone right next to me to kinda ground me.
Ordering is taking longer than I'd like cuz I screwed up and had to restart, and then some older homeless guy comes up to me speaking rapid French. I don't speak french. I tried to convey that I didn't know french and also no, but I'm also freezing up and kinda moving on autopilot, so I shakily just. Buy him the burger, and move to the side. This all sounds bad, but I was getting weird vibes from this guy. I did feel really bad but I was also generally terrified of everything in the moment.
My group is on one side of the counter, and I'm standing on the other side due to people going back and forth, collecting their food. In this time, the guy had moved out of my line of sight and behind me, which I. Really didn't like. He was over bothering another group of foreigners, I think. I'm standing there shaking and Mom calls me over to go stand with them, so I skitter over there. She asks if I'm okay but I can't really talk so I just sorta try to make myself as small as possible.
Pretty soon, the guy had walked over behind my other two friends. The two in my grade and Mom get their food and decide to go upstairs to sit down and find somewhere quieter, and leave me with DM. At this point the guy is directly next to me and I'm like, about to snap.
So DM has me move over to the other side of him, and puts himself between me and the other guy. The good thing is that DM is like. Huge. He's a weightlifter, and generally a big guy, so he's fairly intimidating. He also happens to be like a brother to me, so this is considerably more calming.
I'm standing there just waiting for my order, and when I get it I skip the drink and just try to stay on one side of DM while the guy is on the other side. DM gives him the burger, and while I'm carrying the tray the guy?? Comes up and bumps his fist against mine?? And I give him a shaky smile and skitter upstairs.
We get up there and I sit down, and at that point I really don't feel like eating, so everyone else decides to tell me what it looked like from their perspective. Apparently when I was standing across from them, the guy was right behind me and out of my peripheral, and had a knife that he would take out of his pocket, flash it at them, put it away, and repeat. Which yknow. Not at all terrifying. We finished there and left and it was about the most eventful day we had there.
I've got other stories from Canada but that was the most interesting one, I think. On the plus side, about half an hour afterward, we were sitting on a park and met a really cute dog named Nanuk (I think. That's how you spell it.) And she was all over me, which was pretty cool.
