#70 -Random Acts Mp3
I have witnessed random acts of psychological violence from time to time.
I had just come to Toronto from New York City where I had lived for 13 years. I hadn't been in Toronto very long. I was using the subway to get back and forth from a job I had acquired. Coming home from work in rush hour I noticed a fellow was tailing me. In New York I had learned several things about dealing with people in the street. One, you never meet their eye because, if you do, this can become an invitation to a confrontation or it gives them a signal that they can beg from and so forth. So, you never meet their eye. They other thing is that you're always watching out of the corner of you eye. You know if someone has fixed on you or is following you.
With these crowd tools in my toolbox, I noticed, out of the corner of my eye, that a fellow was tailing me. I recognized him in the sense that there is something about the sleazy looks of these guys that tips you off that they are not normal. He was trying to tail me and I was careful, as I said, not to meet his eye.
I used the crowd to do some broken field, not running, so much as dodging until I was quite a ways down the platform. I would stand close to or just behind someone who was taller than myself and I could see this fellow popping up like a jack in the box trying to find me. He was jumping up here and there and looking for me and he can't find me. He's lost his chosen prey. This little drama went on until the next train came along and I got on. End of story and that was a kind of funny one.
I've lost that fine edge of reality-based paranoia that was a survival mechanism in New York City. I was a full year before I stopped routinely carrying a sharp weapon and settled in to the relative calm of Toronto.
I still warn friends who might jokingly grab me from behind. “Don't do that. You could get hurt.” In case the old defensive demon returns when I'm caught unaware.
Another time on the subway when the trains were crowded as people travelled
home from work. There was a young Chinese girl standing next to me and
I noticed that there was an older, rather raggedy-looking guy was starting
to physically harass her. She was trying to wriggle away from him but
he just persisted and the train was too crowded for her to move away.
I became annoyed and I said at the top of my lungs, “Leave her alone,
you pervert!” Magically, he disappeared.
I had moved away from the hang on thing and was standing unsupported in the middle of the train aisle and nearer to the action. I felt someone grasping my arm and I tried to shake them off but the firm grasp continued. I looked and it was a young Chinese man. He'd witnessed the incident and was holding me steady so I wouldn't fall.
Another time I was walking down Yonge Street from Bloor and looking in
the shop windows. I noticed that there was yet another pervert coming
along and he would look in the same windows so I could see his reflection
with his eyes bugged out and an intent expression. He looked like a Praying
Mantis, a predatory insect with large eyes. He certainly was a bug, of
whatever kind. If I moved down to look in another window then, by George,
there he was again. So, I worked my way down the street and went into
a little Laura Secord store that used to be on the corner of Yonge and
Carlton where it crossed Yonge. I was buying a sweet and I glance at the
window and there he was doing his bug-eyed thing. I walked over put my
face close to the glass and bug-eyed right back at him. He disappeared
and that was the end of that. I guess I was supposed to be really scared
but I ruined it all for him. I wouldn't say he was harmless since he certainly
could have caused some psychological damage to the vulnerable. It alarmed
me a first but then it became just stupid. I confronted him. He went bye-bye.
End of story.
Now all of these were isolated incidents quite far apart in time, random acts but they stayed in my mind like miniature dramas after they were over.
Podcast © Sonia Fricker Brock August 7, 2008
I can be
reached on the web at http://www.soniabrock.ca
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