First OC experience

[football061]

Just got done a morning of hunting and decided to go to wawa and grab lunch. Im still in full camo and boot hunting attire and go to the wawa in glenside. Standing in line I hear a little kid say to his mom as they are leaving "what if he robs the store!!" And the mom responfs with "they will tell the cops now lets go".....I get enough stares just going into my local wawa in camo.....OC is a staring contest.....although I will admit nobody else said anything

[priell3]

That poor, brainwashed child.

[football061]

Now also I forgot....one other guy that was there with his kids asked if I had been paintballing as I was leaving....I said no I was hunting...and that was that....needless to say I guess I picked the perfect time to do it...rush hour lunch time at noon on a saturday in a packed wawa.....

[football061]

That poor, brainwashed child.

Seriously......just because someone has a gun they are gonna rob the joint? I could have been a cop for all intents and purposes....I guess uniformed police are the only ones allowed to have a gun. Glenside is pretty liberal though......

[Metz]

Just came from willow grove sams club, ocing as usual. Passed the greeter and heard loud "I like that" behind my back. Turned around, and exchanged few pleasantries with fellow citizen that was CCing and curious if local cops give me any hard time

15 minutes later bumped into on duty cop in Fresh Market, he either didnt notice or didnt give a damn

[football061]

Just came from willow grove sams club, ocing as usual. Passed the greeter and heard loud "I like that" behind my back. Turned around, and exchanged few pleasantries with fellow citizen that was CCing and curious if local cops give me any hard time

15 minutes later bumped into on duty cop in Fresh Market, he either didnt notice or didnt give a damn

I'd like to OC more so seeing as willow grove and glenside are basically neighbors that's good to hear. From what I gathered at Abington's PD when I went to get my CC check card they were pretty friendly.

[TheChairmanH2K]

intensive purposes.

i dont normally do this but its "for all intents and purposes"

[football061]

i dont normally do this but its "for all intents and purposes"

Haha. I'm an engineer. Beat me up, I totally get it. Numbers are my thing lol

[Curmudgeon]

I can specifically remember 3 encounters involving small children.

Pizza Hut, having lunch by myself, sitting in a booth strong side facing out, and a large group to my right, maybe 3 or 4 tables pushed together. A small boy turns around in his seat to look around and happens to get a look at my pistol. He grabs his mom's shirt and tugs it while trying to whisper something to her. I don't know what he said but she whips her head around at near the speed of light while shouting "WHERE!?" Seeing all this transpire, and anticipating it, I just look her in the eye, give her a warm friendly smile and nod. She turns back to him, whispers something, and that's that.

Walmart, food shopping, I walk past a large family all shopping together, one of whom is a small boy maybe 5 years old. As I'm standing there and the little boy is twirling and fidgeting impatiently he suddenly stops as he finds himself at eye level with my pistol. His eyes immediately go huge with what appears to be a look of stark terror. He looks up at me and I am already looking at him, warm smile, and a wink this time as I figured a nod might be a little too subtle for this lad. He sticks one forefinger in his mouth as his face makes an impish smile back at me. He runs to dad but I'm already smiling and nodding at dad as I make my way past the family, and that's that.

A different food store this time, Price Rite I think, and Mrs Curmudgeon comes up to me, laughing, and tells me she will tell me why later. Well, you can't tell me something like that, I wanna know now, and she says she watched a little boy eyeball my pistol and began shouting...

"Daddy, Daddy LOOK, Daddy LOOK! That man was in the WAR!" as he is pointing at me.

I feel bad because this all happened as I was at the far side of the aisle, but I still manage to catch Dad's eye a minute later, and again with the smile and nod, and suddenly Dad looks a lot less nervous, which is interesting because I notice the whole family is speaking a foreign language. Interesting because it seems that eye-contact, a warm smile, and a nod respectfully acknowledging another person, seems to be a universal language.

I'll repeat something I've said before on this forum: "Much is communicated yet not a word is spoken."

These examples have, so far, been some of my finest application of Situational Awareness.
.

[PennsyPlinker]

Standing in line I hear a little kid say to his mom as they are leaving "what if he robs the store!!" And the mom responfs with "they will tell the cops now lets go"

Actually, that sounds like as good a response as one could hope for. We cannot discern tone or manner from the printed word, but she is indeed right. Her kid had a question, and he got a matter of fact, straight to the point answer. From the information available it doesn't sound like she was real upset about it. Was she?