Scary ordeal, good to know you're okay. PTSD is pretty common in the aftermath.

Yeah, it is one thing to prepare for hypotheticals and quite another to experience one.

I was attacked walking home from work about a decade ago. 7:00p, dark, pleasant evening, other pedestrians out. I turned a corner, heard footsteps rapidly approaching from behind and it occurred to me it might not be a jogger.

It was a mugger (black neoprene ski mask, hood up - 6' tall). I said: "Oh my God." I braced myself (unknowingly flinging a package into someone's yard), brought my purse up and hunched over a small rod iron fence (typical of this area) and he tackled me from behind but I stayed on my feet.

As he was trying to pry my arms off my purse (not saying I should have clung to it, but that was my reflex) I remembered something I'd learned in an NRA "Refuse To Be A Victim" class: yell. Don't scream. Yell. They say to yell "fire!" but instead I yelled over and over: "No! No! No!"

Several guys came running out of nearby houses and a pedestrian who it turns out had seen this guy stalking me from the street came running around the corner.

Police showed up quickly but the perp got away. I kept my purse and the package, it turned out, was a Bible that my sister had mailed to me but which I had not yet opened.

That episode haunted me for a long while. To this day, people run up behind me at their peril - especially if I have pepper spray at the ready.