This kind of reminds me of the time my friend Cecile, who is sweet and kind and totally inoffensive (and smaller than me, even!) got smacked across the face so hard her glasses flew off, on the El, by a guy to whom she’d just innocently offered a spare plastic bag to put his copious (and gross) food trash into. Her glasses clattered down the aisle of the car, the jerk got off at the next station (left his chicken wing bones everywhere), and no one helped her or said a word.

One of my biggest fears is random violence, exactly because it is random. It’s a big fear, but I actually don’t stress about it too much, because, I mean…there’s no point in that, is there? But I’ll have fleeting moments of ‘oh my God that guy is totally going to drive right into me’ (which has happened before) and ‘holy fucking crap that dude is going to knife me’ (which hasn’t).