Now it's two things

I don’t mean to bring anyone down, but this has been on my mind since it happened, and I’m hoping blogging will help me get over it.

Yesterday morning, Dan and I were enjoying a brisk walk on Lombard Street, heading west, when at 17^th we saw some kind of commotion about a half-block ahead. A woman walking toward us, who was closer, saw it too, and when she turned and hurried in that direction I knew something was wrong. I saw a guy in a white t-shirt running around the corner away from a woman now sitting on a step, and when Dan and I ran over, she was bleeding from a cut on her nose. Turns out that two guys held her up at gunpoint, took her purse, then to add injury to injury, whacked her across the face with the gun. Yep…evidently robbing her and scaring her out of her wits wasn’t enough. I suppose I should be grateful they hit her with the gun instead of shooting her with it, but come on! What kind of person does that?

Obviously there wasn’t much we could do except call the police and wait with her until they arrived. I went in the direction the muggers had gone, hoping they’d discarded her purse once they took her valuables (wallet, cash, etc.), but either they didn’t drop it or I didn’t see it. She was completely freaked out, in no small part because these thugs had her apartment keys and her ID, which means they now have an all-access pass to her home. You know, just in case the trauma of robbery wasn’t enough, there was also the hovering fear of future violence. In her home.

At first I was just sort of scared and sympathetic, but after about fifteen minutes I got really, really angry. It’s not that I’ve never heard of this sort of thing before; not only did I grow up in a slum, but someone I know was mugged in the not-too-distant past. Seeing the actual event, though, made it more real somehow, and more infuriating. I found myself hoping that she had scorpions in that purse that would sting those thugs and make them swell up like autumn pumpkins or something. For a second I thought, “Dammit, I should start voting Republican!” but then I remembered that they’d just send more money to Iraq and not really cut crime.

Later that day in work, I spoke to a coworker who said she's currently growing her hair out so that she can donate it to an organization that makes wigs from donated hair for kids with cancer. That made me feel better than any thought of retribution against those muggers. (Although a purse of scorpions is nothing to despise, either.)