Sounds exactly like my town in West Texas, and that’s no joke.
I’ve lived in Oklahoma for almost 50 years and I have never seen anyone assaulted without provocation.
Bullying was a huge problem where I grew up. And I knew of at least one adult who got fucked up royally when he tried to play the Good Samaritan and stepped in to stop an assault by teenagers on a random passerby.
I once saw a waitress fail to acknowledge a man who was clearly trying to get her attention. She might blame glare from the late afternoon sun, but I seriously believe otherwise.
Larry Hagman (Fort Worth) and his mother Mary Martin (Weatherford) were born in Texas. As far as I’m concerned, quod erat demonstradum. :mad:
As a child, a close friend’s recently-divorced mother took up with a truck driver. As they were travelling across country he decided to start smacking her around, and the child, aged 7, was typically present. The mother was also pregnant with his child. After she had his baby, he decided he’d had enough of slapping her around and left. Never paid a dime in child support. The mother eventually caught up with him some 15 years later and had the courage to ask for some money. He wasn’t feeling generous enough.
I’m sorry you experienced all of that SciFiSam**** 
Speaking of men running away. This is nowhere near as bad as what happened to you, but when I first moved to New York my freshman year of college, a friend and I were walking in Times Square and we said “no” to a guy who asked us for money.
The guy went absolutely berserk, following us, yelling, screaming and banging on the windows of the stores we were passing by. We saw another guy walking by himself and asked if we could walk next to him for a few blocks because we were concerned about the behavior of the guy screaming and yelling next to us. All he said was, “This is New York” and scurried away.
For the record, after living in New York for seven years now that is NOT New York. I’ve never had something like that happen since. Well, a guy did come into my store once a few years ago yelling and screaming about how women are bitches (while I was alone) but in that case a guy DID come in off the street to make sure everything was ok, so there are some good people out there!
As a dumb Okie, I was very pleasantly surprised at how helpful random people on the street were in NYC. Philly was a different story altogether.
So much for the City of Brotherly Love. :rolleyes:
About ten years ago, while I was in a Target store, I saw a couple scolding and berating a young girl (5 or 6 years old) who was obviously blind. They weren’t being loud, abusive or violent about it; they were just sternly telling her to behave or they’d leave. The girl stood there silently with her head bowed, clutching her small white cane.
Intellectually I know this wasn’t that big a deal; I’ve seen plenty of kids acting out in stores, and blind kids can be just as bratty as any other kids. But I found the whole scene horribly upsetting anyway and I don’t think I’ll ever forget it.
Really? Not even once? That seems odd to me.
My experiences are from different places, really. The town I grew up in was pretty rough, and the Samurai sword thing was in East London and was gang-related (that case did go to court), but the girl holding a knife to my belly was in a fairly nice part of Leicester (not near London), and I’ve seen quite a lot of other horrible things in other places. I mean, those were just the first ones that came to mind.
I genuinely don’t think this is that unusual or means I’ve led a horrible, risk-filled life. Hell, the gunfight I witnessed just standing in my kitchen doing the washing-up - it’s not like I went out of my way to get into a dangerous situation.
It is unusual. It’s not normal to witness a gunfight from inside your kitchen. It sounds like you just lived in a really horrible area full of gang violence. So I *guess *it might be normal for living in *that *type of place, but it is not normal otherwise.
Siam Sam, I am a native West Texan as well and KNOW I was raised extremely sheltered (read gay Southern Baptist), I’m in no way negating your experience but where in West Texas did you experience this. I was shocked reading your post because I’ve never seen anything close to what other posters have described until I started working as a travel nurse in the ERs up and down the West Coast. I guess I’m still naive about the area where I was born and raised. I’m so sorry for what you witnessed. I’m going to chalk this up to my list of “Yet Another Reason To Be Embarrassed That I’m From Texas”.
I would prefer not to advertise my exact hometown on the Internet.
I was going to send you a PM, but you’re not set up to accept them.
I agree. I’ve lived pretty much my whole life close to London and in London itself and in my 37 years I have witnessed anything like that. The closest I’ve come to assault was getting chased by a local gypsy with a knife when I was a teenager after I stupidly yelled abuse at him, so hardly unprovoked. Other than that all I’ve seen is a few drunken brawls.
Only two were in London.
Christ, you guys really think this is that unusual? Like I said, this is not an account of one week. I’m not making stuff up here and it’s kinda annoying to have that implied.
Absolutely.
I don’t think anybody is implying that; only that you have, clearly, witnessed a lot more violence than most of us have. Of course, the U.K. is one of the most violent places in Europe.
If you read through the thread you’ll find that not many people posted about witnessing events like the ones you did. And then consider that people who have had those experiences are probably more likely to post them here. So yeah, it’s pretty unusual.
I’m not implying that you’re making it up, and I don’t think anyone else is implying that either. What I’m saying is “Wow, you’ve been unlucky to experience that many bad things.” Believe us, it is unusual, and most people go through their lives without going through even half of that.