THE POWER OF FEAR

THE POWER OF FEAR

FEAR makes believers out of people. Fear motivates out of anger to fight back with everything in them. All military men know the power of fear if the enemy gets backed into a corner, fear creates vicious monsters that will fight unto death...fearlessly.

Fear can make people grovel in front of you. Fear can make a grown man cry and beg for mercy.

Let me tell you a story about fear.

I have been afraid, really fearing for my life only one time. There was a guy in my junior high school I will call Bad Boy Billy who was a known criminal. The word around the school was he was a murderer that had not been caught yet. The stories I heard were quite convincing.

Bad Boy Billy rode a Harley with a gang of criminals even at that young age. Fact be known, he was actually older than the rest of us anyway.

One day, I went into the shop paint room to paint a table I had just built when in walked the leather jacketed Bad Boy Billy with an accomplice and closed the door behind him.

I was scared shitless.

He approached me and I could feel pure evil radiating from him. He asked me if I had seen something. I had no idea what he was talking about.

His accomplice pulled Billy aside and said he believed me, that I wasn't anywhere around. Billy just said, ok, turned, told me not to tell anyone about that conversation or he'd kill me, and walked out. I have never felt the fear I had at that moment, not even in war.

That was the first and last time I ever talked to Bad Boy Billy.

I saw Bad Boy Billy one time after that a couple of years later in the deep darkness of the streets of the city. The thunder of the Harleys seared through my chest as his motorcycle gang paraded by. Not long after that I heard he was picked up by the police for murder and thrown into prison.

I believe that type of fear does one of two things to men, depending on who you really are inside: It either makes you fear life and every little thing you approach for the rest of your life or you get angry...angry at what the fear did to you inside and vow to never let it inside your soul again for the duration of the universe even beyond death itself.

Men based in fear say, "Oh, you'd better watch out for this or you'd better watch out for that." Every little thing seems to trigger some sort of fear in their mind. I hate those kind of people. They really get on my nerves, and I will typically come down hard on them verbally and tell them to shut up and grow some balls.

In the second Spider-Man movie Peter Parker has a change of personality when the black substance takes over his body. He suddenly becomes full of confidence. He becomes outgoing and his whole personality changes. His friends and loved ones perceived his attitude as one of superficial love, self-centered egotism.

I didn't.

I saw the new personality as a control factor in his life. I felt good to watch his character go through life with a super-natural confidence to conquer all that confronts him. His friends started calling him "Bad Boy", but I loved him that way.

He was fearless.

There was a time not long ago when my body was quite built. I was buff.

It was very muscular and scary when used effectively. Plus, I had studied the martial arts of Jiu Jitsu and Judo and been in the military for ten years, which instilled a certain confidence of accomplishment, a resolve, even to the point of killing, which is what military men are trained to do.

In basic training the soldier memorizes an oath that starts off with, "I am an American fighting man..." In my experience, not every soldier has the ability to fight in a war. Only the ones with the inherent ability to kill without blinking an eye can be in special forces.

Bottom line, the military builds killers. It's the only way they can be successful. The better killers we are, the better soldiers we become.

This is great if you're a soldier, but in the civilian world it has to be reigned in or people get hurt.

There was one time I needed the ability to induce fear in others. It's only happened one time since I got out of the military, but I'm glad I had that ability when I needed it.

Here's what happened.

Coming to the states was difficult for my wife, Cathy. She was unable to find work anywhere but in Chinese companies. All Chinese companies want to do business like they do in China. Basically, they lie, cheat, and steal. They make employees work like slaves and pay them very little. Sometimes, not at all.

Cathy was working for one of these guys who suddenly stopped paying her. She didn't tell me for about it for three months for fear I would go ballistic. She was right. I did.

When I found out, I rushed over to his place of business steaming mad. I was livid.

I walked into his office and there was Cathy, sitting in a chair in front of his desk.

I closed the door behind me, took a chair and proped it up against the door knob and turned to face the little piece of shit. Cathy's eyes grew the size of saucers to see me liket that.

I turned to her and said,"Go get your stuff out of your desk and go to the car. Now!" And, she left.

I proped the door again and approached the asshole with my teeth bared in anger and hissing the words I spoke. My arms were bare, my sleeves rolled up and my muscles were bulging in his face as he stared at my fist against his chin...almost.

I got within and inch of his face with mine and in so many words, told him he was not going to leave that office alive if he didn't pay my wife. I told him how his blood would be smeared over the walls of the office and his face would be disfigured.

He visibly started shaking in fear. I watched his hands to make sure they never moved off the desk. I moved to slam his face into the top of the desk but never touched him, just acted like I was about to.

Sweat poured out of his face as he shook in fear. He thought I was going to kill him. It felt good to make that piece of shit experience that kind of fear. I think he peed in his pants.

I wanted to slam his face into the desk and wipe the office with his blood, but I didn't.

He started begging me to let him pay my wife to leave him alone and not kill him.

I let him. He paid all of it.

Afterwards, I walked through the office and asked if anyone else needed their money. They all shook their heads in fear.

I left his office and reported him to Homeland Security, to Immigration, to the IRS and the Texas Labor Board. He was smuggling Chinese workers in illegally. Cathy was the only legal one there. I hear he left.

The ability to instill fear in others in that setting allowed me to obtain what others were afraid of obtaining, simply because some asshole Chinese employer held fear over their heads.

I was able to turn that fear around on him to help others.

Later in car, Cathy looked at me with wide eyes and exclaimed,"I have never seen you like that before."

And she hasn't since.