It all started with my wife’s desire for a hotdog, and my desire to please my wife.  It ended with my wife and me in a very volatile situation at a hotdog stand.  I was afraid it might be our last hotdog and our last stand.

So, we are at the beach.  We have been here for going on three weeks.  We’ve eaten seafood out, and seafood in.  We’ve also enjoyed burgers and chicken.

But for a day or two before the hotdog stand incident, my wife had been having a craving for a hotdog.  No, she’s not pregnant—I’m pretty sure.

So, after we had spent the day with some friends at Tarpon Springs, we were headed back to our “home” at Holmes Beach.  We tracked down a hotdog stand in Bradenton.  It had a good rating online, so we navigated to it.

Before we could place our order, the lady taking the order (who was also the cook, I suspect) asked if we could wait five minutes.  She was cooking a couple of Cubans.

I was making some silly comment to my wife about feeling sorry for the Cubans, when there was a disturbance around the corner of the very small building.  I poked my head around the corner just in time to see a young man grabbing a girl, while mouthing obscenities.  She pulled away from him, also mouthing obscenities.  I think her final word was “crazy!”  The rest of the words will not be repeated here.

At this point, the young man walked around the corner of the building, so my wife was aware of what was going on.

A biker type guy (a very large biker type guy) sitting at a picnic table stood up, and pointed out certain aspects of the young guy’s parental origins.  “I’m trying to run a business here!  Get out of here!”

All of this happened far faster than it has taken me to write it.

At this point, I did a very foolish thing.  Instead of saying to my wife, “We’re leaving—now!” and suiting the action to the words, I asked a question: “Do you think we should leave?”

Now, my wife is a person of strong desires, and not easily intimidated.  Also, she really wanted a hotdog.  “No, I want to order our food,” she said.

I had read Proverbs 22:3 earlier in the day.  “The prudent see danger and take refuge, but the simple keep going and pay the penalty.”  It would seem that I am better at underlining verses, or teaching about Scriptures, than I am at living them out.  I stood there while we ordered our Detroit style hotdogs, with Fritos and Barq’s root beer.

The young man had walked away, and we thought that maybe the storm had blown over.  It hadn’t.

After we had ordered our hotdogs (with onions, mustard, and sauce), the young man came back, still mouthing off.  I thought about what to do, and decided that, if push came to shove, I would do my best to sit on the young man.  I am neither brave, nor strong, nor young, but I figured that maybe I could use my table muscles for something.  How I was going to get him down, I had no idea, but hey!  First things first!  First, you sit on him, then you get him down on the ground!  Right?

However, at this point, things took an even more serious turn.  The big, biker dude pulled out a gun and pointed it at the young man.

At this point, the lady inside the hotdog stand urged us to come inside.  We didn’t need a lot of persuasion.  She locked the door behind us.

I had wondered from the first moment of this incident if I shouldn’t call the police.  Why didn’t I?  I can answer that in three ways.  In the first place, this all happened really fast, and felt surrealistic.  It is the kind of thing you read about in the newspaper, but of course it never happens to you—until, of course, it does happen to you. 

Second, there have been several highly publicized cases in which such situations resulted in the death of one or more policemen, others, or both.  Sometimes, when even well-meaning people call the police, things don’t work out well.  My belief is that police and those who call them are generally well-meaning.  However, such a call does often tend to escalate situations.

Third (and my real explanation for why I didn’t dial 911) is quite simple: I don’t know.

Well, all that to one side.  We did get our Detroit-style hotdogs, things settled down, and we got in our car, and ate our messy hotdogs on the way home.  I hadn’t had such an exciting evening since I stopped closing down the bars when I was in my early twenties.  And I will live just as long, and die just as happy, if I never have any such adventures again in this lifetime.

In reflecting on the incident, I think I may have learned several things.

First, I am not nearly as courageous as I never thought I was to begin with.  In fact, I’m pretty much a coward.

Second, I am not nearly as prudent as I need to be.  My wife’s desire for a hotdog should not have been allowed to trump both of our good senses.  I should have protected my wife (and myself) by getting out of Dodge while the getting was good.

Third, sometimes, if you take no action at all, things work out.

One of the lessons that I did not draw from the incident was that I should start packing heat.  In this case, no shots were fired.  If I had pulled out my piece, it wouldn’t necessarily have solved anything.  It would, however, have complicated matters.  And things were complicated enough as it was.

Well, my wife and I still like hotdogs.  And they really were good hotdogs, and fairly priced.  However, I hope that, in the future, I will be more prudent.  Doing something stupid (like staying at the hotdog stand too long), simply because you are trying to do something thoughtful (provide your wife with a hotdog) is the sort of thing that only a fool would do.  I may never be all that courageous, but I could probably at least work on being a bit more cautious.