I'm glad you got off light - I took a punch like that once on BART in SF and was none the worse for wear, but don't get cocky - if you fall to the ground and the perps mean business, you CAN literally get your head kicked in. Or, if they're just casual, they still can kill (or permanently cripple and/or maim) you if they land a good blow and you fall and land wrong.

Count your blessings - it wasn't your fault, and you got off without any serious injuries.

PS - doesn't it suck when you replay it in your mind and you try and figure out what you should have done to avoid (or - if you're more aggro - prevail) in the situation?

Be well.

On the other hand, I'm glad you've discovered your love of pain. Maybe Matisse has some pointers for you.

But as everyone else has already said, do be careful. Remember that if those guys were willing to beat the shit out of some old man, they prolly don't have the best moral grasp on the world.

Drop it like it's hot, Good Samaritan!

I think I would have had my first mouth-punch earlier in the conversation, after I asked them, "if you don't like fags, what the fuck are you doing hanging out here? Dumbfucks."

POW.

It would be fun to see gay basher retards like these guys run out of the neighborhood by an angry Capitol Hill mob.

Congratulations for sticking up for the old guy (even though it put you in danger and yes you probably got off easy) and for having a lifelong fear vanish.

Good work intervening, bad idea to stick around and talk with thugs. As for fear of getting hit, once you discover you're not made of glass it's great, but even better is the ability to simply decide (as I did after being bullied in grade school) "The next guy who hits me is dead. I will fucking kill him." Once that attitude becomes visible in your body language--stand tall; face your foes squarely; make and maintain eye contact; do not cede an inch of your personal space; keep hands and arms free and ready--no one will ever hit you again, as urban predators look for prey, not for fair fights. I adopted this attitude my first day of high school (at a place far from where I'd been the school punching bag for two years) and no one's taken a swing at me since, except in professional situations (bartender breaking up barfights). And I've had far fewer of those than someone in the "service industry" with my bad attitude and smart mouth deserves. Though then the mag-light in my back pocket has a certain deterrent effect too.

Just another day in the real world.

I, not being a thug, kindly declined and walked on.

Sean: I had a little laugh-cry moment once I got inside. The whole thing was so ridiculous and sad—Old Dude bragging about having killed somebody, Young Dudes even considering beating him up, Second Dude's sycophantic laughter. The world is broken.

But you all have convinced me. I'm off to file the report, for the sake of statistics.

freakin' idiots out there in the world.

I'm writing from Glasgow.

I performed "Another You" here on Friday, at Tramway.

Some piece of shit punched me in the head last night (Saturday, Feb. 10th). I wasn't even facing him. Total fucking sucker punch. The force knocked my blue knit hat off my head, and threw it 8 feet away. I've been wondering what it looked like to the (avoiding racial/religious profiling here) scumbag that hit me.

I've taken hits like that before, but it's been a few years.

He ran away, fast. I got up off the wet street and checked for my wallet. (Still got it.)

It's good to know you can take a really hard punch, and there's something satisfying and old and affirming about the tremendous rush of adrenaline after the fact...

I'm running out of time on this computer & I've got no more 1-pound coins to feed into it. I'll talk to you on Thurs., or so.

Allen

enough people don't stand up for those in weaker positions because they are afraid of the consequences or indifferent.

my girlfriend and i have stopped a number of fights between bums and punks downtown. it's amazing what a stare and a phone call will do.

Well, I didn't cross the street because I was crossing onto the block where I lived. I felt going out of my way to avoid a potential inconvenience would be absurd so I held my line. He circled around me, grabbed me from behind and put kiddy scissors to my neck. Kiddy scissors, blunt as they are are scary when held to your neck. He said, "Your people took everything. Now you should come with me and see what it's like to live without land, without your people." I had nothing to say with kiddy scissors still at my neck, I started striking him with the Stranger, which didn't have the editorial clout to make any imapct. I was conflicted. I felt a sense of guilt over the treatment of his people, but I also felt an inherent right to walk home without an alchoholic crack-head accosting me - siting past human rights abuses as his justification for holdig rusty scissors to my neck. I felt an urge to explain that my people didn't migrate to the northwest until the 1980's so we weren't personally resonsible for what happened here. But that is a cop-out and I didn't go there, his circumstance is due to the influx of all European immigrants, which brought the issue of immigration to mind. I wanted to move back to Sweden, social democracy tall blonde men…

Luckily my kind neighbor came running down the street with his pitt-bull and demanded that this miscreant leave me alone and eventually he separated the scissors from my throat and moved across the street. I can't say that being almost mugged on my block made was a good thing, but the fact that my neighbor was there to intervene is the only reason I still feel safe.

I thanked him when I saw him on my way to coffee the next morning. I can't overstate how much safer I feel in my neighborhood knowing that my neighbors will come to my defense in crisis. That is the beauty of community.

I see the man that accosted me every few months. When he asks me for change, I say, "No, remember? You're the guy that tried to mug me, I'm mad at you." He says "Yeah, sorry about that."

But I always want to give him $20.

Your story (well the tagline at the end) reminds me of a great little Dashiell Hammett story. It's called "Afraid of a Gun" and is available in a book of shorts called "Nightmare Town." You should check it out. His ending is a replica of yours.

I get some pleasure thinking your teeth probably carved that jackasses hand up pretty good.

For all the reasons given here in the comments, file the police report!

Don't be such a goddamn wimp. The least you could do is spit at his ass. Guy holds scissors (dull or not) to your throat and you want to give hime $20? If that had been me, I think I would have told him on subsequent occasions to stay the fuck away from me or I'd claw his fucking eyes out.

the behavior you witnessed and then experienced is intolerable. you did the right thing. it upsets me to hear about people like that.

and Cap Hill was crazy on Saturday nite...tons of cars and people including a lot of jerks...