You should meet my wife sometime, Eve. She’s a one-woman force for justice and courtesy on public transportation.
Story 1) Ann is sitting on the (London) Underground on the window side of one of those two-person facing forward seats. Next to her, on the aisle, is a large man with shaven head and dour expression. As the train reaches her station, she stands up and asks him politely to let her out so she can get off the train. No response, no movement. “Excuse me, I want to get off the train here!” No response.
Right. She delivers a sharp kick to his shin, at which point he begins to swear up a storm. As she shoves past, she says, “Aha – so you do speak English!” and walks off.
Story 2) Another Tube journey. The carriage is mostly empty, but she’s only travelling a few stops and so is standing up and holding onto a pole. A strange man standing nearby begins bumping against her in a casual fashion. Now while any given rush hour will force you into a full body press with random strangers, the car is not that full. But she gives him the benefit of the doubt and shifts over. No such luck, he shifts over as well and commences to press against her again. She turns to him, looks him in the eye, and without saying a word places the heel of one foot on his shoe and puts all her weight down on it. This lasts for about five seconds. She removes her foot, and he limps away.
Story 3) (just wait – this is the best one). She’s sitting on a train (overground) with her bookbag on the seat next to her. The strap is dangling, but she has her wrist looped through the handles. Suddenly, this teenaged boy runs past, scooping up the bag strap as he goes.
Now, I don’t know where this kid was going – you can only run down a train so far, it was another five minutes to the next station, and getting off a moving train onto an electrified line isn’t the brightest thing to do. Anyhow, he’d already scooped up two other purses from further down the train, and one of his previous victims was in pursuit.
Unfortunately for him, as I said, my wife had her hand through the handles, so when he scooped up the bag, she got dragged along with it. There is a brief struggle as the thief is shouting “Give me the bag, bitch!” and she attempts to either get the bag back or at least get her hand (which is stuck) back. Finally, recalling her self-defense training, she kicks him in a sensitive spot. No, not there – in his ankle. With her hiking boot.
He falls to the floor screaming (again, taking her with him). By this point, the other victim has caught up with him and is screaming at him and kicking and punching him, stopping only to pull the intercom lever to alert the driver, who comes back and starts laughing at the scene before him.
To make a long story short, the driver calls the police who meet the train at the next station. They arrest the guy who is insisting “I didn’t do anything” despite having three bags still draped over his arm. The paramedics are called. The thief asks the police to charge my wife with assault and gets laughed at (they’d already taken witness statements). And he ends up with 2 1/2 years in prison and a broken ankle.
You can see why I love that woman. 
{Edited for coding. And I love jr8’s wife, too, without even meeting her. Lynn}
[Edited by Lynn Bodoni on 04-06-2001 at 11:34 AM]
