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Half of Simon Zeiter’s brain was thinking, “Oh crap, here we go,” while, he says, the other half was not thinking so much as “reacting.”

Reaching for the phone and dialing 911 and then reaching for the aluminum baseball bat beside the phone, and behind the counter of Canadian Gold & Silver, the Zeiter family’s Calgary store that sells gold bars and coins to investors who aren’t keen on sinking their cash into the stock market.

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Simon Zeiter, whose brain was freaking out, and whose body was reacting, had been speaking with a customer, a real “nice old lady,” when two men burst into the shop wearing ball caps and hoodies.

One had a knife, the other a crowbar. They had not come for tea.

“They were shouting, ‘This is a robbery, give us everything you have,’ Mr. Zeiter, 22, said Tuesday, from the family’s second gold bullion outlet in Kelowna, B.C.

“I don’t actually remember saying this but my customers — there were two men and the lady — told me afterwards that apparently I shouted back at the robbers: ‘No way.’”