We All Have a Bear Story

Some are just worse than others...

There is a viral question that has been asked across the internet for a few weeks, but first, a story…

It was the mid-90s and I was in my early 20s. I was enrolled in a night class at the University of Arkansas at Fort Smith. I lived in Ozark, AR which is about a 40 minute drive one way. Cell phones weren’t everywhere back then, and I didn’t own one, so I was on my own on the long drives each week.

My class was a 3-hour, once a week Literature course and I loved it. I didn’t know back then that I would become an English teacher, but I knew I was finding my groove with this class.

At this time, I worked as a waitress at a winery. I was also a mom and a full-time student. It was exhausting to do all three.

The 3-hour night class was after a full day. I usually blasted the radio with the windows down to make sure I stayed awake on the way home. I also drank a lot of Diet Coke. One night, one I will remember for the rest of my life, I needed gas and a Coke, so I stopped after class at a station off the interstate in Ft Smith.

A black bear at a filling station.

I pulled in and started pumping my gas. There was a man doing the same on the other side of the pump. He was trying to chat, he said he liked my hair, and asked where I lived, but I was exhausted and I didn’t want to visit or give him the wrong impression. Besides, he was acting odd. I smiled at him, but I gave him no response other than to nod my head.

After I finished pumping gas, I went inside to pay…it was back in the day and there was no pay at the pump option. The man followed me in and continued talking to me. He was asking a lot of questions, and to get him to leave me alone, I told him I was married.

*To all of the good men reading this: you should know that one of the only ways women can get a incessant man to take no for an answer, is to say we already “belong” to another man. If they won’t respect our boundaries, maybe they’ll accept another man’s boundaries? Sad, but so true.

This particular man seemed a little pissed that I shut him down. He paid for his gas before I did and walked out.

I paid for my own gas, and as I walked out, I saw him standing near my car. I was immediately aware that there was no one outside except he and I, so I got in my car quickly and locked the door. He disappeared into his car and I breathed a sigh of relief. Whew…I dodged a bullet. Now, on to the long drive.

Except, I didn’t dodge that bullet.

Within a minute or two of pulling onto the interstate, I had a car behind me flashing its lights and honking at me. I didn’t know what it was about so I just kept driving and waited on them to pass me…but, they didn’t. They sped up to get right behind me and kept flashing their lights with the occasional honk.

I started to get scared, so I sped up. I was driving faster and faster and I noticed that my car was acting weird at the same time. This went on for several minutes. I remember looking down and seeing that I was going way too fast, but there was no way I was going to pull over…I thought it might be the guy from the gas station behind me.

As quickly as the incident started, it stopped. The car flew around me, I slowed down, and then I realized that there was definitely something wrong with my car. I was having a hard time keeping it on the road. I had to fight it for some time before I finally got to an exit I could pull off. I had a friend who lived not far off the exit, so I drove to her house.

I pulled in, and as I did, I realized I had a flat. It was very flat. It looked like I had ruined the tire. My friend’s boyfriend happened to be over, and he went to look at the tire to see if there was something he could do. He came back in and told me that not only was my tire ruined, so was my rim, and then he added this little tidbit; my tire’s valve stem was cut off. He asked how I had managed to do that?

I can’t say for sure what happened, but I think we can all make an educated guess. A man that I rejected at a gas station cut my valve stem and then tried to get me to pull off the interstate in nowhere Arkansas to do god knows what to me. I was young and dumb, thank the gods, or I might have known I had a flat and pulled over. My ignorance might just have saved me.

This is just the tip of the iceberg of awful stories I have, but it is the only one I would want an audience to read. This story is nothing compared to others my friends have endured and nothing compared to others where women have not made it out alive.

The point of this story is that every woman you know has a story. Every single woman you know has been in a situation that made her uncomfortable or scared. Every single woman has crossed a street, moved across the room, left a party, pretended to talk on her phone, covered her drink, ducked into a bathroom, pulled out pepper spray, or placed her keys between her fingers because a man made her fearful or scared for her life.

I know that this sounds outrageous to all of the good men reading this. I know because my own husband is always outraged and incensed when I tell him the things that have happened to me and my friends and my female relatives through the years.

So, the question that has been asked across the internet for weeks: Who would you rather run into while walking in the forest? A man you don’t know or a bear?

This is why so many women respond with “a bear.” We expect that we know how a bear will react to a human — and we know if it is going to be the end of our life, the bear will make it quick. The bear also won’t sexually assault us or hold us captive or torture us.

A lot of men think there isn’t much worse than death, but most women know there are scenarios that are much, much worse than death. It’s probably why so many of us enjoy true-crime series. We already know these things happen, but maybe we can learn a trick or two to keep ourselves out of these situations.

To all the good male allies; don’t be offended by the bear question. I just hope you can understand our answer.

~Jess