This is why you never threaten someone permanently stuck in survival mode.

Years ago I was living with a couple of friends and lost both my job and my place to live within

the same 24 hours when the economy went down the toilets and the bane foreclosed on the owner

who owned the house that we were staying in. We had about two weeks to get out and then I ended

up homeless and living in my car for two years. That's another story entirely. The point, however,

is when living in a large city in a vehicle, your survival mode kicks in constantly. You're always

worried, you're always cautious, and in the event something happens that's a threat, you usually

think of the most effective brutal and quickest way to remove it as a threat. As a result, even years

later now that I'm stable, I don't really have the ability to gauge an appropriate response to a

threat. Maybe that's why I went overboard here, but I'll share this story and let others be

amused or past judgment as the case may be. While I was living in my car, I developed a

relationship with someone who was a bit more stable than I was. She didn't really care that I lived

in a car, as I was always presentable and was able to hold down temporary work. Nobody really

knew that I lived in a car unless I shared that information with them. She was big on helping people

and was genuinely a good person, as I thought at the time. We had a falling out and just gradually

lost contact. Our relationship was more of a passion thing. We remained friends on Facebook and

she was fairly popular on there with about 500 friends. This is important later. About a year after

the two of us broke up and about 6 months after I had last spoken to her outside of a few casual

comments and likes, I was doing much better. I had just started a new job that I was about to go

through training for and afterwards would be out of the car and into a more permanent residence.

I had done a lot of work towards that point and things were great. I was at a kinkos using their

internet on my laptop and my phone rang. It was her. After a very brief exchange of pleasantries,

...