138 I Can Read You Like a Book E
and my 3-year-old cousin. We walked onto a porch and a man with
a bloody stump for a head answered the door. Even a discerning
8-year-old did not recognize the stump as a pork chop sitting on top
of a man’s shirt. In total terror, I dove off the 3-foot-high porch and
screamed to my little brother to run. He was well ahead of me. My
sister, holding the hand of my toddler cousin, dragged him down the
street while he screamed for her to run faster. In those days, I
thought her hand wouldn’t let go of him because it was paralyzed in
fear. Today I believe her action was a standard female response to
terror: save the baby.
Every one of us kids sharply directed our energy at getting the
hell out of there. That’s how fear operates; whether or not the
direction is ideal, it is aimed at something particular. The energy is
typically balled up in fear awaiting a release command from the
limbic brain to fight, flee, or freeze, or in the case of women, a
combination of actions. In all of these cases, though, the energy is
unidirectional and prepared, and the focus is external. Eyes dilate
to take in as much data as possible about the source of the fear.
Then the body either turns away from the source, or toward the
object to take a second look at the threat and determine a course of
action. When the threat becomes omnipresent and overwhelming,
a man takes action. This threshold for what is omnipresent varies
from man to man.
However, a woman’s external focus may be split between the
threat and the object of her protection. For this reason, female prey
will sometimes immediately attack a predator rather than run from
it. These females don’t want to leave their young as an appetizer,
