There's A Sniper On The Bridge

 

On Sunday, as I was driving up the length of Nova Scotia, Canada back to where I live and I had an experience that shocked me.

It highlighted something for me that I knew in theory, but didn't realize emotionally...

There's a major difference between reality and what we see when we are being entertained.

I was driving with a friend, and was in the passenger seat and it was about 7 PM in the evening.  It was still bright daylight, and we were singing along with a CD.
 

I am one of those odd people that looks up.  Did you ever notice in the movies that noone looks up?

Anyway, I saw a man on the overpass sighting down a rifle right at me!   

I looked up as I saw his movement of the rifle from my passenger over to me...

Since I served five years in the military I am very conversant with the body language of someone sighting through a rifle.  Although I must admit, I don't remember looking down the barrel before!

He was bundled up in a beige winter jacket that was obviously being used to obscure him and what he was doing.  I was initially trying to resolve it into a camera, but I couldn't, faced with my personal experien

ce and artist's eye, it was definitely a rifle.  With a scope.

We went so fast, it was a highway, and by the time we got to the next exit, he would have been gone.  Because two of us saw him, you can't take out two witnesses at once, so that probably saved my life...

What a feeling.  And I play video games, where I am in battles and danger constantly. 

I tend to watch crime shows, and I've always been an action movie fan...

It just wasn't the same.  Yow~ I can't describe the depth of feeling that is there which is in major contrast to the imaginary events...

 The feeling is like a bottom dropping out of what you know is true and everything is up in the air.  You know what is real, and it's not what you thought it was...

Very heady stuff.  I wouldn't want to experience it again, that is for sure.  Although, I had that feeling once before, in backwoods New Brunswick. 

Twenty years ago, my ex husband and I were checking out logging roads trying to find good beaver dams to fish trout from.  He had gotten permission from the landowners who lived out of the area to check out the roads, of course, so it was all in good  fun.  And great fishing, of course!

We had one of those old Ford Broncos, with the locking hubs and four wheel drive capability.  So when we saw the road we wanted, and I jumped out an locked the hubs.  I wasn't hard on the eyes then and whoever lived in the trailer across the road must have seen me...

We drove back into the forest for forty minutes, didn't find the fishing spot and came back out...  When we came to within a mile of the main road, there were three trees freshly cut down across the road!  And it was dusk and I had the weird feeling we were being watched very, very closely. 

My ex was a very smart man.  And very savy in the ways of the world, he got me to scoot over into the drivers seat, leave the engine running as he jumped out to move the trees off the road.  He grabbed his rifle from the backseat as well.. Smart man...

As he walked past the truck, he lifted the rifle in the air as if in salute and waved at me...  After that, the watched feeling disappeared, he moved the trees and we carried on our merry way.

I think I've had enough drama in my life now...  Maybe I'll watch more cheerful TV shows now.

It would be interesting to hear if anyone else had a weird experience like that, please comment if you have a story to tell! 

Images:
Wikipedia - 1,3, 4, and 5.  2. Toulouse and Nina Munteanu at Barrington Bay, NS,  6.  The Trickster by Teresa Young - Feb. 2009.