This is the second post with my reflections on an incident during which I got punched in the face and had a tooth knocked out, story to be found in part one of this article. Written on August 13, 2014, so not true for how I currently feel about it!
Fear after the Event
Even though I handled it very well at the time, it’s definitely grown on me since. The two or three weeks after the incident weren’t great and I had a few different low points during them (the initial couple of days, then after going back to the dentist and having anaesthetic and work done, and then when the dentist said that I would have to have a further procedure as part of the root canal treatment and that this would disrupt my holiday plans). It was a lot of mental effort having to sort out some of the hassle, like not having a phone and having to buy a replacement, having to tell people, claim off my insurance, etc. It actually took me two weeks before I actually ordered a replacement phone – I wanted to shop around a bit more instead of just buying a replacement iPhone straight away, but it ended up being more effort than I was up to, so I just went for another iPhone again. It was only when this arrived, two and a half weeks later, when I felt that I had my life back on track.
Every time I retell the story, or even think about it, I get a scared feeling in the pit of my stomach and get a bit shakey. For the couple of days afterwards, whenever I heard a car outside it made me jumpy, and when I walked around the area again (a few times a week) I was very cautious and on edge. On two occasions I saw somebody on the u-bahn who could have been the person who attacked me (I can’t remember what he looked like and can’t picture him definitively at all, but my subconscious seemed to recognise something) and that made me very jumpy and emotionally on edge, though I was prepared to act if I needed to and planned out my options. On two other occasions while in the same area I had somebody shout something out of another black car to me and I had a car honk it’s horn as it drove past. I’ve no idea if either were related or not, and neither did anything to suggest they would come after me, but they both shook me up a bit for about half an hour (though I again was ready to react and quickly checked the best way to go).
I’ve also been much more wary and cautious than I used to be while walking around other cities. In Bonn the fear was that the same guy would find me again, which in other cities I’m not afraid of, but I guess now that I know from experience (instead of just in my head) that these people exist I’m much more wary of groups of males, especially at night time. I noticed this during a recent holiday with friends in Prague, as we walked around in the evenings and had various reps trying to sell us things (drugs and strip clubs being the most common things), and I was much less comfortable interacting with them than I otherwise would have been. I’m also wary in a racist way, being put more on edge by people with arab or black skin colours in some situations (definitely not always, just if they’re someone who might put me on edge anyway). This is not something I like, but I can’t help but acknowledge that that’s how I am at the moment.
This has made me have more sympathy and empathy to people who have been victims of things in the past, especially people who have been subjected to sexual assault (which is in my mind more both because of the nature of this incident and because it’s something I am aware of anyway from seeing various stories and from people I know who have had things happen to them): it is absolutely horrific how women are treated in our society, how common occurrences of sexual assault and rape are, and we (as a society and as men) need to do more about it. Seeing how much this has affected me (not a huge amount, but still some) just from this small particular incident, and then considering the degrees of magnitude worse which some sexual assaults are, makes me much more aware of how bad that must be and how strong some of the survivors of these are in dealing with it; especially if the perpetrator was just a typical looking person in a normal place (like a club), the trigger from that must be a whole lot worse and come about much more frequently. And that mine happened in a city which I no longer live in and in an area where I didn’t live. On this point I strongly recommend (unless you think you’re already clued up enough) reading some accounts of sexual assaults and rapes to better understand their side of the story and how a large number of them don’t occur in the ‘stranger rape dark alleyway’ way and in some of them how the perpetrators might not even acknowledge what they’ve done – such as ithappenshere.oxford.tumblr.com. It really isn’t a big deal anymore. I just mean that this gives me a small insight into how it might be for people who have had big deals happen to them.
Being Ready
This is along the same lines as the above point about this being a test, but part of my ‘life philosophy‘ (what a horrible pretentious phrase) is about being ready. I think it’s important that we’re prepared for what life throws at us; education as they do it at school is pretty poor in preparing us for life in its entirety. I talked about this a bit in THIS POST (link to Parkour being useful post), but I think it’s important to ‘be ready’ for life, and the huge variety this might bring. We like to think life is this magic bubble living up to our neat and tidy expectations, but it rarely is. This incident is a very specific example and probably an unhelpful one to use, being as it’s closer to the extreme and unlikely end of life’s challenges, but it’s one I thought of a lot in terms of having the right state of mind, being physically ready, and knowing what to do.
The sort of things I include in ‘being ready’ encompass a wide range of things: physical capabilities, mental state-of-mind readiness, and skills/knowledge.
A basic example (for skills/knowledge) is first aid: this is something everyone should know, it’s so fundamental. I’ve done two first aid courses and used the knowledge some, though not hugely, and would feel quite helpless and silly if I didn’t know some of the stuff. But also being physically able around a broad spectrum: to run (sure, I’m “lucky” in that I’ve done seven years of sprint training and keep myself fit such that I can outrun most people, but it’s also useful to run for the bus or to save children from in front of a car (I have a friend who’s done that) or just being late for something); having basic strength (the number of times I’ve been on a train and have to either put my suitcase up high or help somebody else with theirs); knowing how to fall over safely (which I’ve picked up through parkour, but should be taught to everyone, it just shouldn’t happen that people fall over and sprain their wrist); how to move around your environment (whether you want to or have to – I have on at least one occasion climbed into a window because I’d locked myself out, but I also used a similar thing as a twenty-second-shortcut for awhile); etc.
Age seventeen I was shopping for a new pair of school shoes, and I decided that I would only buy a pair that I was able to run in: usual ones have a flat, solid heel and a slippy front part of the sole, much less practical than a trainer (unless I happen to be dancing, in which case being able to spin on a shiny floor is useful), and I managed to find a pair that looked smart enough (though not as smart) but had a sole with some rubber, halfway between shoe and trainer. I’ve done the same thing again buying my latest pair of smart shoes, which I’ll wear with a suit for work or for a wedding: they look less smart than other shoes, but for me there’s a core of movement ability that ought not be compromised easily. When I choose jeans, I make sure they’re ones that don’t restrict me enough that I can still run and climb and jump a certain amount (though it’s a trade-off, jeans are rarely as good as tracksuit trousers in my experience). Wearing a rucksack, I try to keep it on both shoulders so that I’m ready to run (which is something I actually consciously made sure of in this incident after I’d taken my phone out of my bag).
And also being mentally able to deal with it. Panicking in this sort of situation is dangerous: if you freeze and don’t act right, there are consequences. This includes loads of different things, not just being attacked and chased but also driving a car, riding a bike, rushing to pack to leave the house, walking around the street, etc. Both the ability to react and not panic/freak/stress, and also the readiness to pre-empt things. A big thing that I do (which I know that many people do) is to think through possible scenarios before they happen so that if they happen you don’t have to think how to react because you already know, and you can just run through the reaction procedure; this removes a potential freeze-pause and adds the ability to rationally analyse and run through a situation instead of having to react on instinct.
Fighting is probably a useful skill too. In this situation I was ready to fight if I had to, but didn’t think that escalating it would be a good idea. Instead of trying to run round the guy I could have charged him, though that’s unlikely to be a good plan. As he was only after the phone I thought I wasn’t under much physical risk; it would be different if his primary aim was to harm me.
But this idea also includes mechanical skills, computer skills, knowing how to cook, mend clothes, etc, etc. Like in that poem about what ‘a man’ ought to be able to do. To cover the bases of all of life. It just happens that this situation is a specific one from which I’ve discussed this.
The ‘framing’ effect and the narrative in how people react to my story
There is a huge amount of pain and suffering and negative things in the world. This incident happened to me at a time where there is comparably very little wrong with me life: I have accommodation, safety, comfort, food, drink, money, etc. I didn’t have a job or any serious studying to do that got disrupted by this, I didn’t have children to look after – actually, I was probably in a near-ideal position to have something like this happen. And it was a fairly minor incident: I got cuts and bruises, a tooth knocked out, and a phone stolen.
Yet I still got quite a lot of sympathy expressed. This is the framing effect, altering the background lagainst which one understands something and changing one’s perception of it, often based on expectation.
I’m a healthy, well-mannered, middle-class individual and bad things aren’t meant to be in my narrative.
One of the common ones I heard was “what a terrible thing to happen on a year abroad”, presumably based on the idea that year abroads are meant to be all pleasant rainbows and sunshine and that any negativity disrupts this ideal and is therefore more shocking. Sure, it wasn’t pleasant for me, but I’m still in a much better position than many people. The homeless people around Bonn were certainly in a worse-off position, having no accommodation, little money, and generally quite poor health. They are human (although treated less so and probably feel less human because of their situation and treatment) and have the same emotions I do, but apparently I’m deserving of more sympathy. Maybe I’m taking this point a bit too far, but that’s the direction of it at least; our emotions are clearly inconsistent and that leads to some outcomes that could be called inequitable.
For the narrative, it also depends how I tell the story on how people react to it – how I frame it from the start. Do I start by saying that a guy jumped out of his car and attacked me for my phone? Do I start by saying what they were doing and that I “got involved”? Etc.
I had no phone for two weeks
Nothing like making you realise you don’t need a smartphone than not having one. I had to go back to making old-fashioned plans with a time and location for meeting instead of being able to rely on using a phone. This wasn’t that big a deal actually, but once I got one back I was straight back into the old facebook habits.
Conclusion
To be clear, now that I’ve left Bonn, there are only small traces of this incident on me in the way that I’m more wary and cautious (mostly in a healthy way, but in a way that makes me feel uncomfortable) in daily life than I used to be and that it still affects me if I think about the incident or retell the story. Even in Bonn I was still walking around the area that it happened a few times each week. As I’ve just thrown down a load of different thoughts that I’ve had about what happened (as well as the story) there’s not really any conclusion as such. Feel free to reflect yourself and let me know what you think, what you might have done or not done. I’m not saying that you should or shouldn’t stand up for this sort of thing or what risk to take or what is right or wrong, that’s for you to do.