In Which I Do Not Get Mugged

A week ago last Friday I was walking down the hill toward dinner from yoga class when I saw three young men loitering at the corner of A*****d and S****r, half a block from my house. The corner in question is a T-shaped corner where two one-way residential streets meet, and it's boring. In the last five years I have never seen it inspire loitering in anyone.

My guard went up immediately, but I was too close to avoid an encounter (thanks, big hood on my big down coat), so I walked by them. They were facing inward, talking and laughing among themselves and smoking, but one of them caught my eye and I gave him a Discreet Urban Greeting -- the same nod, half-smile and silent "hey" that I would give a co-worker who was on the phone.  And then I thought about walking fast, since I had just read a Psychology Today article about how criminals choose victims and how they don't. What they like is shambling or a walk that lacks organized movement... what they don't like is a fast, fluid, purposeful gait. So I walked that way for a block, trying to exude athleticism and purpose, and, as soon as I was around the corner, I ran for two more blocks (proving, I suppose, that I really DID have athleticism and purpose).  As a side note: it seems like people save running for situations of extreme terror or situations where they want to burn calories, but actually a brief stint of trotting can be utilized at any time to cover distance fast, and is well worth adding to anyone's portfolio of locomotive techniques. 

Safely down the hill to civilization, I looked back. No hoodlums, no harm, no foul.

No more thinking about it, until yesterday a community alert came out: 

Since January 7, 2009 there have been three handbag snatches in the area of North Cambridge. These incidents occurred at the following locations: {three boring residential corners around my neighborhood}. In each of these robberies the suspects were unarmed and were described as being 3 black males approximately 14-18 years old who approached the victims and demanded their property. All these incidents took place between 9:00 PM and 12:30 AM.

Those were my hoodlums, all right, and they stole people's stuff on Jan 7, Jan 10 and Jan 11. I saw them on the 9th, around 7:30 PM, after they'd done just one mugging. So that was interesting -- it's not often that one's hunches get confirmed.