Theresa Lewis

What do you do when your body or your bones don’t perform like they’re supposed to? You know what I mean, if you have ever sat in an awkward position until you legs fall asleep then you try to get up and walk. You can’t do it.

My experience didn’t quite happen that way, but it was just as devastating. I worked as an office administrator for a few years and it was my job to do the banking on a daily basis. I had done it for years without incident. The bank was a good four blocks from work so it was an easy walk and a time out that I enjoyed.

I had no cash on me, only checks for deposit. As I was standing at the wicket, the cashier whispered to me that there was a man in the bank. As far as I knew, there were several men in the bank at that time. She told me not to turn around. Suddenly, I got what she was saying. I told her to let me know when he left and she said she would. When I realized that the bank was being robbed, the bones in my legs mysteriously and instantly melted. I leaned on the counter for support.

I had never once looked in the direction of the robber so I had no idea what he looked like. Once the teller told me that the coast was clear, I wanted nothing more than to get out of there as quickly as possible. I made a bee-line to the door and met a handsome young man with a charming smile who passed the door from his hand to mine.

Once I was across the lobby to the outside door, I felt a great sense of relief. I let that door pass from my hand to his. The moment my foot touched the pavement outside, I felt a whack across my chest that knocked the wind out of me and threw me against the wall of the bank. I bounced off the wall and fell to the ground. I didn’t know what hit me. Suddenly, I realized that I was in the middle of the SWAT team. About twenty officers with weapons drawn jumped on the young man as he left the bank behind me. The officers slammed the young man to the ground mere inches in front of me. They cuffed him and carted him off around the corner to their waiting vehicles. From the time that I got the notice that the bank was being robbed until the bandit was cuffed and dragged off, no more than three minutes had passed.

Nobody came to my assistance, not even the officer who had knocked the stuffing out of me. I was left lying on the street. I managed to get up on my feet by pulling myself up while hanging onto a street garbage can. My legs refused to move; they trembled like a leaf in the wind. I thought I was going to have to crawl on my hands and knees all the way back to work. I stayed where I was, leaning against the wall of the bank for quite some time until I could feel my bones materialize again.

From start to finish, the incident itself probably only took about three minutes at the most. My recovery period, however,  took a heck of a lot longer than that.

As soon as I was sure that I had the use of my legs again, I walked back to work. The entire walk back to the office seemed like an eternity and my legs kept threatening to melt again.

Once I got back to the office, I had a hysterical meltdown. In times of great stress, my mind goes completely blank. It’s only in the aftermath of a traumatic event that it hits me… then it hits hard. After that experience, I refused to do the office banking. I let my boss handle it.

When I told my office mates about my experience, I was informed that that particular bank was one of the most robbed banks in the city. They said they never go into that bank from Halloween to February because that is the most active time of the year for that bank to be robbed. Shortly after that incident, my boss changed banks and had his wife take care of the deposits.

The End