I was on my way to Judy’s house when I was mugged. It was about 7pm, dark–so it must have been early Spring–and I was walking along Green Street in Cambridge, around the corner from my house on Putnam Avenue. I was thinking about going over to my boyfriend’s after dinner, I was thinking about work and some writing. I was not thinking that one of the two young men across the street would suddenly rush at me and grab for my bag.
I did the wrong thing: I held on to it. Somehow the two of us fell to the sidewalk and I found myself rolling around on the pavement with a guy a good 8 inches and 60 pounds larger than I was. And determined, as determined as I was not to lose my bag. But I knew something: I had a knife in my pocket, a wickedly sharp Gerber Pixie that I had been given by my boyfriend to wear with an outfit I had made for an SCA event. I had taken it to show Judy over dinner.
In a crisis time does something weird. While I was physically engaged with my mugger, I was thinking. I had the time to consider my options and think things through, and what I thought was: 1) I had a knife in my pocket; 2) I could use the knife; 3) he was stronger than I was (a fact I was learning in real time) and might take the knife away from me; 4) I didn’t want to stick a knife into another human being, but 5) he might not have a similar scruples, thus 6) the knife would stay in my pocket, and 7) there was nothing in my bag worth this amount of drama (I generally kept my cash in my pocket).
I let go of my bag. The mugger got up and he and his pal the lookout ran off. I got to my feet and continued on to Judy’s apartment. Then I went to the police station, where I filed a report, looked at mugshots, and eventually went to my boyfriend’s apartment. Even though I’d gotten away unscathed, after the fact I was terrified. I stayed with my boyfriend that night and went home in the morning to change for work. There I found my purse hanging on the knob the door of my apartment. Everything was in it (ID, book, miscellaneous stuff) except for my antihistamines.*
This was in 1979 or thereabouts. In the years since, I’ve thought about this a lot. Especially when I hear talk about “good guys with guns” or “if I’d been there I’d have…” And I think about the people who are trained to use force–guns, usually, but maybe knives or clubs or their own two hands–to deal with an enemy. What is the toll on them? Imagine knowing that you ended another human being, took away their consciousness forever. I swear to God that even as I was grappling with that young man, I knew I did not want that responsibility, not unless it was to save my own life. And I sensed that this guy wouldn’t hurt me if I didn’t make him. So I didn’t make him.
I wonder if the people who think arming everyone is a good idea have stepped outside their shoot-em-up fantasies to wonder what it costs one human being to take the life of another. Or their surety that in any test they would be the one to survive. When I look back at that night on Green Street, I’m grateful that I got off so easily, that I had the good sense not to keep fighting, but more than that, that I will never have to carry the burden of knowing I saved my life at the cost of someone else’s.
__________
*The guys were never apprehended. I like to think that somewhere in Cambridge, MA that night there were two guys who popped my Sudafed hoped for something bigger and more interesting than clear sinuses.