If someone is followingbehind you on a street or in a garage or with you in an elevator or stairwell, look them in the face and ask them a
question, like what time isit, or make general small talk, I can't believe it is so cold out here orwe're in for a bad winter. Now you've seen their face and could identifythem in a lineup, you lose appeal as a target.
My husband grew up going to an inner city high school, one where violence wasn't uncommon (he tells of entering a bathroom between classes, then backing out quickly and having to tell a teacher about blood everywhere -- there'd been a knifing), and this is something that he taught me, too. He's not a big guy -- average height, but slight build -- but whenever we'd be on the street and someone a little menacing-looking would be walking towards us, he'd always look him straight in the eye and say, "hey, how's it goin'?" The guy would usually just nod back and that would be that. Most of those guys probably wouldn't have given us a second thought anyway, but just in case, he's made it known that he's not afraid to talk to them -- and that he's willing to be polite to them -- and that he's seen their face. He says this helped him get through high school without getting beat up. <g>
Of course, sometimes male ego gets in the way -- he got mugged a couple years before I met him, on the steps of his college dorm (same city he grew up in) and was stupid enough to fight back. Got his head bashed in with a baseball bat (there were two of them -- he punched one in the face but the other came up from behind and bashed him). He said he realized later how stupid it was, but he'd just come from the ATM and had $100 in his wallet and he wasn't going to let them have it ... and he did indeed keep his wallet when his football player roommates heard the commotion and came out with baseball bats of their own. <g> No comment on the fact that the ER visit probably cost his parents more than $100.
Kathy
