What would you do if strangers tried to pick a fight with you?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I want to know what you would have done in my situation.

For the record, I’m a girl of average size, but I’m not physically fit. Pretty wussy.

I was on the way to work this morning. It was about 8:30 or slightly later. Two loud girls are standing on the escalator which goes down to the station where I catch my SkyTrain.

They don’t abide by the traditional “walk left, stand right” escalator rules, oh no. One of them stands on the left, and the other stands on the right, two stairs down. There is a small space between them, and a guy walks between them with no incident, so I figure it’s safe.

Oh hell no, apparently I had greatly overestimated the intelligence of these two vaguely human shaped baboons*… my purse brushes one of them on the back as I walk by.

She yells out, “And she TOUCHED me, too!” in a manner that made it sound like they were already talking about me.

I keep walking, not altering my pace, not looking back. I hear them saying “Wanna get her? Yeah! Let’s get her! Let’s do it!”

I keep walking.

They yell to me. “Hey! HEY!”

I keep walking.

One of them yells, “Yeah, you BETTER walk away, you fuckin’ ho bitch!”

I keep walking.

But it bothered me all the rest of the way to work, and I was shaking and fuming inside. Should I have done something better? I saw them picking a fight with a man at the same SkyTrain station once, but I assumed they knew each other. Now I think it was probably a similar situation.

If I ever see them doing it again, should I notify the police? The thing is, I’m notoriously bad at recognising faces - I’d never be able to pick them out.

I have bright blue hair and am therefore easily recognisable. I’m a little afraid that they’ll try to start something again.

What would you have done? What have you done in similar situations?

Hope the minimal swearing is okay for this forum.

*No offense meant to actual baboons with this remark. Also I need to state for the record that I originally typoed it as “baboobs”. Hee!

2

Honestly, you did good. Really, is it worth it to get beat up by people who (a) don’t have anything better to do, and (b) probably don’t really care about minor assault charges?

Of course, since they’re basically just schoolyard bullies, there’s the old stand-up-to-them technique. I probably wouldn’t recommend it for a (self-admitted) “pretty wussy” girl unless there’s lots of people around. Then you might use it.

You simply turn around . . . point your finger . . . and yell “FUCK OFF!!!” as loud as you can. Then you go about your day.

It usually startles people into leaving you alone, and lets you feel like you did something.

But as I said - you did the right thing. Don’t let them bother you.

3

Oh yeah, I missed this part. Absolutely. Just do your best on remembering their faces / heights / clothes. Might not be a bad idea to talk to a SkyTrain security person or employee as well and put them on notice.

4

Your Canadian accent makes me conjure up a “Kids in The Hall” version of this incident, but I can’t decide who plays the mean girls and who plays you.

5

You did everything exactly right! You didn’t feul their fire them by responding to them. If you had done so, it would have gotten ugly very fast. I commend you on taking the best course of action. There are lots of people out there with chips on their shoulders who would have confronted them and then gotten into a very bad situation.

You did good!

6

I was verbally assaulted and physically threatened at work and spent hours feeling shaky and “I should-have”. A nurse doesn’t expect to be exposed to harm by the father of a newborn in a private room, but…
You did the right thing–you walked away uninjured. If you do see them again, or anyone behaving the same way, alert authorities and let them help keep everyone safe. That’s what I did and would do again; get self out .

7

Strangers try to pick fights with me every time I go out (in the Going Out meaning of the phrase); if laughing at them doesn’t do the trick, punching them in the nose usually does. Walking away seems like the sensible thing to do, though, although I’m not sure how this goes in the US, especially when it comes to girls.

8

Walking away is taking the high road and is usually the preferable action. In this case, you did the right thing.

You asked what I’d do: In this particular case, I’d have continued walking. When they persisted in their verbal assault, I’d have stopped, turned around, and asked them what their problem was. If they kept it cool and offered that they were upset because I bumped them, I’d apologize and walk away.

If they continued their verbal assault, believing that they held some moral higher ground (as well as numerical advantage being 2 on 1), I’d answer back in kind.

If either one of them touched me, I’d punch 'em in the throat and kick 'em in the groin and we’d go from there. I’ve found that bullies tend not to respond very well from equal or greater aggression returned at them, even when they outnumber you. Typically, their aggression and forwardness is directly related to their greater numbers, and so equalizing that by showing you’re not afraid (or by leaving one groaning on the ground, hardly able to breathe), levels the playing field and they usually back down.

Take that with a grain of salt though, I’m physically fit as well as not wussy.

I’m curious about something though. You say:

and then you say:

My guess is, you’d recognize them. There’s more to recognition than remembering a face. It’s part of why in a police lineup they sometimes ask each person to recite a line reported to have been said during the crime.

That said, notifying the police would be the right thing to do, however, IME, being the good samaritan rarely works out. It’s at least a part of the reason so many people seem to just ignore things like that: it ends up being a colossal waste of everyone’s time, and I’ve actually seen the police get angry about being bothered by something they can’t do anything about.

My best advise would be to pick up a can of pepper spray and do your best to avoid them without actually inconveniencing yourself. There’s no reason you should have to alter your whole commute just because they’re idiots.

9

This hasn’t happened to me in a long while, but my ego rarely lets me just walk away without whipping out a “Bitch, just try something” stare and if that doesn’t work, cussing them out, and if that doesn’t work, getting preternaturally calm and looking for a way to quickly sucker punch him (or them) and if that won’t work, looking for an exit with dignity. A passing cab is good. Ducking in an elevator. Manholes.

10

When I was in high school, this guy tried to pick a fight with me. I just stood there as he postured manfully (with 10 of his buddies to back him up against a person at least a foot shorter :rolleyes:). I eventually just said I didn’t want to fight, then left. A couple days later one of his buddies came up to me and said,

“My friend is sorry, he didn’t know you were a girl.”
:smack:

11

You did the right thing: Stay calm, keep your cool, walk away. It’s not worth getting hurt over.

(Now, vaguely human shaped baboobs, you should have taken pictures for documented proof… ;))

12

I wonder what faking a seizure, going cross-eyed, and screaming “Birds, birds, birds!” repetitively, would do.