Back to real life

At a Seattle area community college, I was working on yesterday’s post—or at least attempting to do so,  since for a half-hour I was repeatedly losing my train of thought by women either individually and in concert shouting “No!” from a nearby classroom.  At first I thought that perhaps this was one of those “no means no” excercises, but on a bulletin board nearby it was announced there was a course called “Personal Safety & Self-Defense” going on inside. I noticed through a reflection from some glass that the instructors was demonstrating “defensive” actions while shouting “no.” I decided to take a peek inside the class room, and observed that the women inside were, well, the kind you would be more concerned about beating you up for no reason. There was however, one male “student,” an elderly white man. After performing stiff arm routines, they began practicing what appeared to be kicks in the groin exercises, this time shouting “stop.” 

I couldn’t help but be somewhat bemused by it all; they were all fairly nondescript white people, and I suspected that their principle fear was of encountering “blacks” and “Mexicans” on some dark night, with the assumption that the night time transforms them into werewolves or vampires out for their blood.  In an environment where Hispanics are often openly shown disdain and subjected to thinly veiled threats of violence by people like this, this kind of thing naturally has an aura of hypocrisy for me. Now, it is possible that these tactics might be “useful” in domestic violence situations, although from what I observed, it is doubtful this was the intent of this particularly course; the “intent” was to be “loud” in order to attract public “attention”—these people sure got my “attention,” anyways.

But let’s face some facts. In Seattle, the likelihood that your typical white person will be “assaulted” by a complete stranger is somewhere between slim and none in their lifetimes. When I was living in Capitol Hill, on the weekends I would sometimes get “bored” at night and just go take a walk downtown, even in the wee hours of the morning. This was before “gentrification” started pushing out black residents out of the Central District. I rarely encountered anybody, except those who waiting for the “redeye” buses back when those routes still existed. I had a personal rule: Look like you are actually going somewhere, especially in poorly lighted places; don’t look like a “victim” by appearing confused or not knowing where you are headed. Of course, I never ventured into areas that I was not familiar with, but then again I had no reason to do so.

That is in Seattle. However, in Kent I was mugged once, when I was out walking down a deserted road at around 3:30 AM to catch a bus to the airport where I was working. At some point I observed some guy who looked like Dwayne Johnson idling in the middle of a road up ahead. I thought he was drunk, but as I approached nearer to him, he came back to the sidewalk and idled some more. I tried to get around him but he blocked my way. I had on a pair of earbuds attached to one to one of those cheap USB drive type mp3 players, and my airport ID badge was attached a cord around my neck. He asked me what kind of music I listened to, which was kind of odd; when I express wonderment at this request, he reiterated his quest for knowledge by socking me in the face; my head must be a little hard because I just staggered a little but kept my senses. The man told me to “stay down,” tore off my neck cord and ran off; I observed that he was running toward a car parked in the shadows on the nearest side street, and in soon it was  speeding down the road with its headlights off. 

This bizarre episode certainly had me stumped, but I supposed that this was some kind of “training exercise” for a wannabe gangbanger. I took stock of the situation at hand, and realized he had only taken one thing of any value to me: my ID badge, which without I was banned from entering the AOA. To make a long, long story short, I called the Kent police to report the theft, I reported the loss to the airport ID office, the employees there thought I was lying to avoid the $250 replacement fee, I refused to change my story and “admit” that I “lost” the badge, the police officer who was “handling” the case went on vacation that week, and when she did return I gave ID people her number so that she could tell them that I wasn’t lying, and then I had to wait until my supervisor showed up, and we went into a “private room” where I was told to repeat again what happened, and he seemed to be satisfied with my story, and informed me that someone had dropped the ID badge in an unmarked envelope through the “lost badge” slot outside the access office the day after the incident. Well of course the thieves were that dumb; as soon as one them noted the DHS decal in the card, they probably thought that they had just mugged someone who could get them deported, so they probably snuck around the airport after hours looking for a place to dump it. The people I really was angry at were the ID access employees, who cost me $600 in pay just because they wanted to be a-holes. It makes you wonder who your “friends” really are.

 

I wonder if any of those “tactics” and shouting I observed in that classroom would have “worked” against this mugger, since he was rather bigger than I was, and there was no one within miles to hear me shouting “no” or “stop.” More likely, he would have dispensed with the “mister nice guy” and really made sure I stayed down for the count.