Did I almost get mugged in downtown Springfield?

Warning – this post contains strong language.

Most people will agree with me that there’s a time for talking and diplomacy and there’s a time for strength; a time for talking calmly and a time for a display of physical and emotional force. What’s harder to determine in any given situation is where exactly that line is. I found myself reflecting on that line a lot this week and wanted to share my thoughts with you here.

Part 1 – The Incident

I got in a little tussle while walking downtown in Springfield, Mo to visit my friend for a drink last week. It was 4pm on a Wednesday, so I didn’t feel like I had anything to worry about as I headed from the parking lot toward the Golden Girl Rum Club. But as I approached the business a thin white twenty something year old dressed in baggy shorts with a neon green dew rag walked backwards around the corner while howling something loudly. He was followed quickly by two friends who also appeared from around the corner laughing suspiciously. I overheard one of them say that they had just been permanently banned from the Library and this seemed to make them all very proud.

I stopped in place and tried to avoid the energetic backward walker by shimmying to the right, then to the left, but he was all over the place and he backed right into me. I lifted my hands up, feeling a little irritated as he jumped back in surprise, and continued past him.

Then, as I tried to walk past, he did something unexpected. Before I had chance to respond he had grabbed me by both of my shoulders from behind and got very close to me; as if we were good friends or he was trying to schmooze me. My reaction was delayed a bit out of confusion, but after about a second or two, I shrugged him off very aggressively and said “Back the fuck off!”

I make a distinct effort to put every ounce of emphasis on the f bomb as I said this, leaning into a hard, crispy articulation of the consonants and giving the “u” sound its full tribal force.

It had it’s effect. I could see that he was shaken by this as I watched let go of me him and stagger back. His friends stopped for a second to look at me, assessing the situation. Then as he recollected himself he yelled “You put your hands on me first, mother fucker!”

I tried the door at the Rum Club as he walked backward away with his friends, keeping a close eye on their movement. But instead of finding the usual crowded room, I was disheartened to find a locked door and a sign that read “5pm-9pm”. I didn’t know exactly what to do but my heart was racing wildly and my adrenaline was really pumping. The last thing I wanted was to linger around these guys, but knowing my friend was to arrive soon I decided to wait here for him to arrive and then make a plan.

When my assailant noticed me stop, he turned around and started walking back toward me with that distinctly thug like side to side shoulder sway. He puffed his chest, “Yea, you better walk away you little pussy ass, bitch ass [n-word]!” he yelled. I looked him squarely in the eye and was planning my defense as he neared me, but he stopped his advance at about 15 feet away and, as if an invisible line was holding him back, put his chest out over the line a couple of times to threaten me. Luckily for both of us, he seemed to be more bark than bite and, as my friend approached from the distance, he and his friends walked away cursing me out and flipping me off.

Part 2 – The Coincidence?

As I debriefed my friend on the situation we decided to walk a couple of blocks in the other direction and landed at a different bar. I was still on edge as we ordered drinks, and as my friend started telling me about his work but I was completely unable to focus. I also really felt uncomfortable with my back to the front door, so I was glad when he asked to move to a different spot that was quieter and took a position facing the front door.

To my unhappy surprise, I was quite unnerved to see friend #3, the bigger of the three thugs, walking in the same bar and ordering a drink. I apologized to my friend for being distracted, but pointed him out and then noticed thug #1 and 2 walking up to him outside the door. They peeked inside at me and then all three settled into a table right outside the front door.

At this point, I told my friend it was time to go. I asked the bartender if we could pay our tabs and if he minded showing us out through the back door into the alley, briefly explaining the situation. He pointed to the three men, “Those guys? That’s not cool. I was just getting ready to ask them to leave; they’ve been walking up and down the street all afternoon looking for trouble.”

“Yea,” I said. “Since we already got into it a little bit, I’d rather just avoid another confrontation and slip out the back if that’s ok with you.”

“Yea, we can do that,” he replied.

The bartender let us out the back and we continued on to a classier establishment we knew the the thugs would be likely to visit and were able to finish our night in peace and quiet.

Part 3 – The Debrief

When I got home I told Ashley what had happened and, while she was very empathetic, one question she asked made me feel a bit defensive. I wanted to share that here because it was a very reasonable question and one that I had been asking myself all night.

Is it possible that taking a different approach to begin with could have averted this whole situation? Hadn’t my strong reaction to the stranger putting his hands on me escalated the situation?

The question caused some internal conflict as I worked through it. Maybe I should have walked to the other side of the street when I saw them coming. But that wouldn’t have worked. They appeared around the corner at the same time I did, and avoiding them wasn’t an option. Secondly, I could have been gentler when he grabbed me—perhaps I could’ve de-escalated things by not reacting so strongly. But the question is, would that have been wise? What if he had a weapon? What if the situation wasn’t as harmless as it seemed?

While my natural tendency is to avoid confrontations at all cost, my conflict was also anchored by previous lessons from similar experiences. I remember being stopped on the sidewalk by a man in Chicago as I walked alongside a group of my co-workers for a weekend visit when I was just 17. He asked to shine my shoes. Initially I politely declined, not wanting to get separated from my group, but he insisted and kneeled down, grabbing my foot and starting to shine my shoes.

“How much is it?” I asked.

“Oh, $10 my friend”, he said as he scrubbed my shoe fervently.

I watched in growing discomfort as my co-workers rounded a corner in front of me; not even noticing I had been left behind.

“Ok, ok,” I said, “I really got to get going.”

“I’m going to take my time.” The force with which he responded as he looked me straight in the eye let me know I was, indeed, in trouble. As I waited for him to finish the first show I began to notice our size discrepancy; he was a full grown man’s man and I was still pretty scrawny. Then, as he moved onto the second shoe, and with my colleagues completely out of sight, his brawny co-worker appeared and walked right up behind me. My heart dropped into my chest and my legs became like stones. I was about to get mugged.

At last, he finished the second shoe and both men looked closely as I pulled out my wallet, gave the man $10, and started away. I felt him grab my left shoulder and was terror struck again.

“$10 per shoe,” he said slowly.

I knew he was full of crap, but I was more than happy to be making it out of here for only $20 and desperately needed to catch up with my friends (this was before the time of google maps and cell phone proliferation mind you).

Just because things turned out ok doesn’t mean things were always going to turn out ok.

Here’s the thing. It’s very easy when looking at things from the outside to make an ivory tower judgment about what seems ideal; but doing so often conveniently leaves out very important information. So I understand why someone would judge me for taking a position and responding like I did, but I’m going to argue that taking that position is at risk of being dangerously idealistic and unrealistic. Just because things turned out ok doesn’t mean things were always going to turn out ok.

Part 4 – Some Karate Philosophy

Something energetic happens when someone moves to hurt you or take advantage of you. Being a victim of an experience of someone blatantly imposing their presence on us feels a certain way. And as a flood of adrenaline hits our system, if we don’t have another default response we are at risk of becoming overwhelmed with fear and experiencing something like a physical paralysis. It’s the stuff of nightmares. It’s as if we are squeezed out of our own bodies and are forced to just watch from a distance as we’re victimized and abused. This happened to me over and over growing up as I was bullied in various scenarios and then continued to play itself out in my nightmares for many years after.

Full disclosure – I’m fully aware that I had every luxury in this situation. I’m an athletic 6’3” 225lb man with 20 years of martial arts training. I watched closely as the two side goons eyed me up and down before deciding not to jump in and help their friend. The other assailant postured hard, but in retrospect I don’t think he really wanted to fight me (though if he had a weapon he may have been more bold). So while all that definitely played a role here, there’s something equally important that isn’t about any physical skills and that is the ability to transmute that fear and adrenaline into something more useful – in this case righteous indignation¹.

What does that mean exactly?

Let me digress for a moment to explain. You know when you’re watching a Karate or Tae Kwondo demonstration and the student yells out really loud “Kee-yaa!”

The “kiai yell”, while it’s basically become a meme in Western culture, is a technique popularized by Japanese Karate practitioners of centralizing your energy into one forceful expression that is meant to disrupt your attackers while also focusing your own energy in the present moment. It’s done by sharply exhaling one forceful breach while tensing your lower belly and yelling something. In many cases in the US, people will actually say “Kiai”, which is basically the equivalent of yelling “scream”, but it really doesn’t matter what you yell.

I’ve never trained in Karate, but to see a good example watch this Karate master demonstrate it at about 24s in the video. He delivers the kiai with the type of meaning and force that I’m talking about.

The think that’s esoteric about the kiai is not that there’s any magic to it… much of the time it’s far from it as many practitioners either produce a feeble or silly scream-like sound that’s quite irritating and useless. What makes the kiai esoteric, or complex, is that it requires more than just the technique to accomplish anything useful; it requires a strong feeling. Doing a proper kiai requires a gathering together a strong sense of ownership of our physical body and space. If we can access that feeling in a moment of danger we can transform any fear we might be experiencing and adrenaline into energy we can use to proactively protect our lives and personal space.

I didn’t realize it in the moment, but after reflecting on my own encounter later I realized that I had used the kiai yell myself by yelling the f bomb with such force. In that moment I felt a strong sense of ownership of my physical body along with a feeling of indignation that someone else would put their hands on me in an unwanted way.

I have no doubt that my action did lead to a more direct confrontational energy… but it also unsettled the thugs. In reality, I have no idea what their intentions were. They might have just been high and being stupid… in fact that’s the most likely scenario. But they also might have been intending to hurt me; the other goons sneaking up from behind me while goon #1 got in my personal space and obscured my vision. Either way my actions unsettled them just enough that they decided to walk away and I had the chance to get away.

Part 5 – Conclusion and Thoughts

As I talked about this with Ashley, she related to that feeling of paralysis that happens when someone imposes themselves on your space, but expressed that she it was really hard to determine where to draw the line. I totally get that. And while it is true that some lines are harder to draw, here’s what I told her.

One way to be more prepared for situations like these is to take some of the thought out of it by thinking ahead. We can make the decision today that there are certain lines people have no right to cross. One of those lines is absolutely any unwanted physical contact. Other lines might be more abstract and that’s ok too. Either way whenever one of those lines is crossed it’s ok to strongly feel a sense of ownership and indignation around someone invading your space and energy.

1. In general, I think it’s really important to be careful with the use of “righteous anger” or “righteous indignation” – it’s far too easy to justify our anger as “righteous” when we’re just being petty or childish. In this case, even though I said a “bad” word, I’m willing to argue that protecting our physical life and space against unwanted assault is a valid use of the phrase. ↩︎