That's not very knife....

So, a few of you may know about Angry Guy. He's the fellow that lives downstairs and sounds like he has tourettes syndrome. He throws things, screams obscenities; a real piece of work. But despite all this, we've managed to stay civil ... until recently. He's been much worse the last few days.

The other day, I was coming back from a walk and he was coming out of his apartment. I gave him a nod, and he shouted something back that i didn't hear through the headphones. I pulled them off and said "sorry, didn't catch that.."
"I called you a Bitch!" he snapped.
So I casually replied, "well, you're a loud-mouth off his meds, Whatcha gonna do?"
"I'm gonna fuggin KILL you, Bitch"
Fortunately, I have a couple of inches on him, so I'm able to do the moove where you move in real fast, tall and wide; then stare down at him menacingly. I did so and added something like "you don't wanna try that with me"

This was pretty novel to me. Later I'd realize that move was the very first time I'd done it. Normally on a death threat, even with someone I wasn't too worried about, I'd try to be getting out of it as fast as possible. I'd have butterflies and the shakes pretty bad. But this time I was completely in control. Essentially, for the first time, I was the Alpha, not a big talking Beta, but fully Alpha.

Instead of keeping the shakes under control, I watched time stretch out and examined the situation and my options. He oh so slowly reached into his pocket (from my perspective) and fumbled for his knife. I knew what was coming based on other neighbor's reports. I knew I could trap his arm in his pocket and disable him, but I didn't want to make the first strike. I knew I could dodge this guys best strike, or even use a little judo to redirect him if need be.

So he finally gets the knife out (probably took a whole second, but it was clumsy, even from a normal time perspective), then he had to fumble some more to get it open. While he was at this, the manager popped out of the apartment across the hallway (still putting on his shirt, too... busted!) and got between us. Well it was pretty much over at that point.

Not really a fight. Not really a problem. But definitely a change in me. I can't explain it. I mean, part of it is the 5htp, I'm sure. If I had had this happen before I adjusted my serotonin, I would have been in a dark spiral for a month. But none of that either. I can't believe that serotonin is linked to Alpha/Beta behaviors. Weird...