One snowy night in Montreal, I was walking home from a party and as I passed an alley near my apartment, a man jumped out of the shadows and grabbed my purse. Now before I go any further with this story, I should explain that at the time – I owned one purse – yep – just one – and I rarely used it. So go figure – I drag the dumb thing out of my closet for the first time in months and this is what happens. The man grabbed my purse and started to run down the alley. He wasn’t running overly fast and that was because he had a small problem – I hadn’t let go of the purse so he was dragging me along with him. Without thinking, I took a swing at the guy. I must have startled him because he let go of the purse and jumped back. We were at a standstill – staring at each other. “Give me the purse,” he growled. My eyes widened. “No,” I said. At that exact moment a police cruiser passed the alley. He hesitated and that was all that I needed. I quickly turned and ran out of the alley, shouting for the police. The cops gave chase but didn’t catch him. Although he didn’t appear to be the best of muggers, he could obviously run pretty good when not encumbered with another human being. I spent the next couple of hours at the police station, filling out an incident report and looking at mug shots. My mugger wasn’t on file. It was only when I finally got home that I realized what an idiot I had been for fighting back. I was fighting over an old purse that I didn’t like and rarely used. In it was a pair of ten-dollar shoes and a five-dollar bill. That’s it. I had nothing else to loose. The keys to my apartment had been stuffed down the pocket of my coat and my wallet with all my identification was still at home. That’s the problem with intense situations. Your adrenalin starts pumping and you go on instinct regardless of the fact that if you had really sat down for a moment and thought the situation through – you wouldn’t have gone there.
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