It's hot here, even at 7:00 in the morning, and the direction that my bus stop faces is bright bright bright so I had on sunglasses. It was a Friday. I was listening to headphones. At first I thought maybe he was a kid, but I realized quickly that he was in fact a small guy - late teens maybe early 20's. Long, grungy shorts and a way too-big Scarface T-shirt. I could tell as he came shuffling by that he was going to engage me. "Do you have a dollar I can borrow?" He spoke a bit slowly. He had a glimmer of an accent that I couldn't quite place. Ok, that's an easy one. I wouldn't give him, or pretty much anyone walking by, a dollar, and I didn't have a dollar to give. I had no money at all. "Nope. Sorry." I said. He kept walking, maybe ten feet farther, slowly turning around. "You don't have a dollar?" by this time he was turned completely around. He had those sort of droopy, sleepy, slightly too-far-apart eyes that I somehow associate with mild developmental disabilities. Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, maybe. I don't know. Off. "Nope," I said. "I don't have any money". He blinked at me and took a step closer. His eyes were red rimmed and glassy. He glanced down at my pocket. "Yeah you do. You've got money." I was a little annoyed, and a little confused, and getting uncomfortable. "No," I said, more forcefully. "I've got nothing for you. Move along." "If you got no money how come," he waved his hand dully up and down at me, eyes fixed on my face, "you got all that? How you got an iPod? Yeah, you got money." I looked down. I was on my way to work so I had, well, my work stuff - a camera case and a laptop bag. I was listening to music on my iPhone. "This is my work stuff. I go to fucking work so I can have money. I am just waiting for the bus to go to work, OK? Leave me alone." I was a combination of pissed and scared. I was annoyed at my iPhone for a combination of reasons - I hate the white headphones because it screams out "IPOD!", and I guess this guy was too dumb or out of it to see the little bump near the right earpiece that makes it scream "IPHONE!", but why bother with that distinction anyway? He knew what it was. Also, I am not rich. I won the stupid iPhone in a contest, I never would've spent the money or been ABLE to spend that kind of money on an iPhone. Like I'm going to try and explain that to this fucking troglodyte? The irony that the contest that I won it in was about the bus, and this was all happening at the bus stop, occurred to me, but didn't stick around long because I was getting more and more sure that this guy was going to jump me. There is rarely anybody around my bus stop. It's not isolated, exactly, but it's in a sort of weird spot. I get on the bus earlier than most people are up, so I see a few dog walkers and a few joggers, and when school is in session there's a crossing guard a few hundred feet away, but there aren't any people around. Usually. He walked around on the grass behind me. I stepped away from him, and turned so I could see him. He leaned up against the fence. "Are you a bitch?" Hmm. Harder question to answer. I did my best to ignore him at this point, and started planning in earnest what I was going to do when he came at me. I was fairly encumbered with the laptop and camera case. Either one would do a fairly good job of walloping someone, should they be deployed in such a way, but they were sort of entangled. I didn't really want to take them off, but I didn't like that I was restricted by them either. "I think you a bitch." He was sort of muttering to himself at this point. "You a bitch and I can fucking kill you." I turned to face him directly. "You want me to fucking call the cops, dude? I'm not giving you anything! Get out of here! Go home! I just want to get on the bus!" My heart was going like a house on fire. I'm pretty sure that at this point he was deciding to jump me but, as fate would have it, at that exact moment someone else came walking up the bus stop. Just some guy, mid 30's. Clearly just coming to catch his bus. The little guy turned to the new guy. "You want some weed?" the new guy said, flatly, "I don't do any drugs." The little guy slowly wandered off. The new guy waited a minute or so and then said to me, "Meth is bad." "Yes it is. Fuck." I said. "I could tell," he said, "exactly what was going on from all the way up the street." "Fuck." I said, "I just want to get on the bus." ------------------------------- I'm a young(ish) guy, fairly healthy. 6 foot 4. This guy was maybe 5 feet 5. I easily out-weighed, out-reached this little guy. And still he was basically getting ready to jump me, while I am standing at a bus stop across the street from an elementary school on a normal suburban street, at 7 o'clock in the morning. What the fuck? My neighborhood is lower middle class for sure, maybe even with a capital 'lower', but it's not a BAD neighborhood by a long shot. I thought about filing a police report, not that they could do anything, but maybe my report would be a factor in adding a patrol or something. I don't know. I didn't end up filing a report. I thought about waiting at a different bus stop. The one this happened at is closest to my house, but not by much at all. But really, fuck that. I don't want to be scared, and I don't want to leave this problem for someone else. Over the weekend I kept thinking about this all. I figure it was probably a one time thing. Monday morning I went to the bus stop as usual. I didn't listen to my iPhone. I smoked a cigarette (I had some left over from the previous week when I went to a bar). I made sure that I stood where he couldn't get behind me if he came walking up. I was anxious. Nobody was around the whole time I waited for the bus. The bus came, I got on. I guessed that the guy had just been a fluke. I was relieved. But then, wait, shit! As the bus pulled away I saw that fucking guy come shuffling around the corner! Thirty seconds earlier and he would've gotten to me. Fuck. What to do what to do. Clearly now I am targeted. The more I thought about it the more angry I got. I mean, Erin and Milo go walking around out there some mornings. If this guy is willing to hassle me, he's probably willing to hassle them right? And like, little old ladies walk around the school too. Is he going to go roll them? Out of everyone who could be hassled by this guy I figure I am as able to handle it as anyone, if not more, due at least to the fact that I already know the guy is out there. ----------------------------- As it happens, I did not get back to the bust stop on Tuesday. I didn't avoid it, It just worked out that I went with Erin and Milo to drop him off and got a ride to work with Erin. Wednesday morning nothing happened, and so on and so forth. I guessed it was just one of those things. Meth dude was visiting grandma in the neighborhood or something. Slowly but surely I went back to feeling more or less comfortable at the bus stop. I stopped thinking that the guy was going to come around the corner, and really, eventually, I stopped thinking about him at all. I told the story to a variety of friends. Everyone thought it was funny that I'd lived in Brooklyn for many years, never got hassled there, but in suburban Texas I get hassled. I got a fair amount of "Buy pepper-spray!" "Carry a club!" "You need a handgun!" kinds of advice and, although I can see the wisdom in them, it's really just not me. Like I'm going to bash some guys head in? God I hope not, but at any rate I am certainly not going to go out of my way to make sure that I have something handy should anyone happen to cross me. Damn, what a way to live that must be. Like I say, I'd forgotten more or less all about it. Until I was walking to the bus stop and as I crossed the street perpendicular to where I wait I saw the guy, about a block distant, coming for me. Fuck fuck fuck. Ok, this is it, I thought. My heart was racing. Should I just run? There's a bus stop farther up the road the way I was walking, and I could probably get to it before the bus got there, but that wouldn't solve anything and, again, I felt some weird, likely misguided duty to be able to stand and be confronted. I was quaking with adrenaline. I looked around the bus stop, figuring that in my neighborhood it was a fair chance that there was an empty beer bottle lying around. Nothing. No big sticks, either. I figured I had about 30 more seconds until the guy came around the corner. I dropped my bag on the curb and turned around again, searching desperately for a rock, something, anything. Nothing there. It was just me. I formulated a plan. I reckoned the guy wasn't just going to come and jump me, he was going to engage me in conversation first, again. So my plan was, essentially, hit back first. Meaning, when I was sure the guy was going to attack me, I'd get the jump on him. I was going to wait until he started talking and then say something like, "Here! Here's my money! Take it and leave me alone!", pulling (nonexistent) money from my left hip pocket, he would follow my hand as I pulled it out and when he was preoccupied with that I would bash the hell out of him with my right. One good shot in the ear, or maybe even the throat would get him and then I'd, I don't know, kick him or something. I figured the cops would be more sympathetic to a civil servant with a wife and baby waiting for the bus than with some scruffy, antagonistic criminal weirdo. I was ready. I heard his footsteps coming around the corner. I steeled my nerves, took a very deep breath. I was ready for it. He came into view. It was just some random ten year old kid walking his dog.