constant vigilance! and other lessons from being robbed

My handbag was snatched as I was walking home at night last week. Some dude came up behind me on his bike and grabbed it, and took off. I yelled, but there was no one around, and I happened to be wearing heels that night so the chase was rather short. This happened within a couple of blocks from home, so I ran home, rang the doorbell like crazy and got Seb to call the police.

The night of, I was just shocked. Couldn't believe it happened. I couldn't tell the police anything of much use, since I only saw the back of the guy's hoodie, but I spent most of the night unable to sleep, brooding over the scene in my mind. By next morning, I guess the shock had worn off, and I was really mad. How dare this guy steal my stuff! What an asshole! Fueled by my fury, I spent a couple of hours prowling around the area where my stuff was taken, looking suspiciously at anyone on a bike, to see if the thieves had discarded anything. I kept going over what happened in my mind, to see if I could have done something differently.

I was regretting that I hadn't taken off my shoes and thrown them at the perp as he was making his getaway, when the police called to say that someone had turned my stuff in. Along a little side street within a few of blocks of home, one of the residents had found my bag on a bench in front of their house. Missing was the cash and my phone.

I was happy to get my stuff back - at least I would be spared some of the replacement expenses - but at best I had mixed feelings. I was thankful to the person who had turned my stuff in, but I was still really angry that this had happened at all. But I was also starting to think that it could definitely have been a lot worse.

So the lesson here is this: These things happen when they happen, even in "safe" parts of town, and the best you can do is minimize the chances that the thieves will choose you as their victim. Like, always be aware of your surroundings, especially when there aren't a lot of people around, look around to see if someone is coming up behind you. When in doubt, just take a taxi. Even if you are generally paranoid about these things, the thieves will choose to strike the one time you didn't stick your cash and credit cards in your sock and you're wearing heels instead of sneakers. So constant vigilance! Because it could happen to you too.

Talk about mollycoddling!

A Japanese girl who's been studying english in Philly for the past 6 months called me up last night. I had invited her to a couple of parties chez nous, but I hadn't heard from her in months. She's going back to Japan next Monday. She said she has all this luggage, so she's thinking of calling a taxi to get to the airport. Sounds like a good idea, I said. Could I tell her how it's done? Umm, okay, hold on, let me look up the phone number of the taxi company... You just call and ask them to send a taxi to your address. They might want to know the airline and your destination, so you should have your itinerary in front of you, I said. After a short pause, she asked if I could call a taxi for her. Ummm, okaaaay, I suppose I could. (Although if you can't call a taxi for yourself after over six months of language school in another country, clearly there is something wrong.) I know and I sympathise with the difficulties in learning a language, and particularly for shy japanese people. But I would like to think that I would be too ashamed of myself to ask someone else to call a taxi for me after having studied the language intensively for six months. At the very least, I would offer to buy the person a coffee or something.