“Sometimes paranoia's just having all the facts.”
I don't know why but lately I've become paranoid about getting mugged*. I walk for about 45 minutes every day before work and since I work downtown sometimes that involves walking through sketchy streets among unsavory characters. I've always taken precautions to avoid being mugged because I know how often that kind of stuff happens because I read the Seattle police blotter blog every morning. I try to - avoid pulling my iPhone out of my pocket unnecessarily, avoid making eye-contact, always pay attention to my surroundings, and generally just project an air of toughness by metaphorical puffing my chest out.
Recently, I've been taking my avoidance game to a whole new level by never slowly my pace up even a little bit, not even if people flag me down. I felt bad about not being as helpful to the Russian man a few weeks ago who asked my where the Russian Embassy was. I could have used my iPhone to find out but I didn't because I was worried about it being a trap just to steal The Precious so I just kept walking after telling him I didn't know. I almost did the same thing this morning when some punk-rock-looking dude stopped me to ask what time it was. I was torn between my desire for self-preservation and my desire to by a nice guy and - to make a long story short - the nice guy won out. I stopped to tell him the time and guess what happened? Nothing other than getting a polite "Thank You." It was a much needed reminder that I live in Seattle, Washington and not Baghdad, Iraq or Bogota, Columbia.
*I was mugged once, many years ago. The whole event was so non-traumatic that it wasn't until my roommates convinced me that I'd been mugged that I realized I was more than just the victim of a particularly aggressive panhandler. I guess when people make you scared enough to part with all the money in your wallet that constitutes getting mugged.
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