Reminds me of a story a friend told me when I was traveling through South America.
My friend was walking home late at night and a guy from another country (forgot which, but it was obvious from his accent) asked him for money. This exchange of course happened in Spanish:
"I have an iron"
"what does iron means in your country?"
"by iron I mean knife" and pulls out a knife
"oh, because here iron means this" and pulls out a gun.
I would immediately interpret that as "I don't need a knife (to absolutely fuck you up right now)" based on the oblivious completely casual tone and lack of any fear.
Which if you know anything about martial arts is complete bullshit and doesn't exist. If the dude has a knife, there isn't a "badass" alive that survives without huge injury, and death most times. There is a reason the saying "the winner of a knife fight dies in the ambulance" exists.
Responding with a nonsense question or statement can apparently reboot an assailants brain momentarily, and make it easier to defuse or escape. I dont remember where I read it, but apparently if someone's trying to shoot or stab you you can scream something like "Chickens dont eat meat!" And the assailant will go " whats chickens got to do with this? Do chickens eat meat? Im pretty sure they do its just not really normal to feed them meat. But still, why are we talking about chickens?" And by then you're uppercutting him in the balls and legging it in the other direction.
It's actually very likely the guy didn't even have a knife. I had a mentally ill guy once approach me and my friend while we were hanging around in the street waiting for the store to open. He was rambling a bit but he mentioned he was gonna get his shotgun and kill someone (he didn't specify us, in fact I don't think he ever made a direct threat against us, but it was clear he was trying to scare us). My friend was sweating bullets but I just asked if he was hungry and gave him my bag of trail mix. He left, confused. I'm quite sure he didn't have a shotgun.
People are so unused to violent confrontation in the United States that just suggesting violence indirectly can be enough to scare them into giving you something. Anon's "mugger" was probably doing this. And they don't expect it to work every single time.
People are so unused to violent confrontation in the United States that just suggesting violence indirectly can be enough to scare them into giving you something.
At a bus stop, I was nearly beaten for wearing the wrong color shirt. This fella was told to hit someone wearing red and, in an attempt at easing their conscience, kept trying to find a reason to dislike me. Meanwhile, I’m just confused and apparently befriending him over our shared hatred of Russians and security guards and a mutual love of Islam. Unlike the greentext, my guy had the courtesy to at least apologize and explain the situation. Feels like a fever dream and I do not expect a single human being to ever believe me. There is no punchline, just my continued confusion. I still do not know how to feel about this.
Do you have cousins? Both of us used to, and we were bitter. Given the current state of Russia, I’m still bitter but I can’t speak to their feelings now.
A dude told me he had a gun, he was trying to rob me or something. I just told him that was neat, like "oh cool.. this dude is just into guns or something".
It wasn't till later I realized he was trying to rob me. He just stared at me like I was a moron and walked away...
I wonder how many potentially dangerous situations I've obliviously avoided thanks to being hard of hearing.
If it's a random stranger trying to talk to me on the bus, After I say "pardon?" thrice, I usually give up and default to random response noises like "uh huh", "hmm interesting", "that's a lot to think about", polite giggling, enthusiastic nodding, or "oh that's neat, good luck!" based on what I think they might be talking about.
I'd have no idea if I avoided anything nefarious because I have no idea what any of the conversation was about.
Though one time an uber driver asked me to marry him. I thought his English was just bad combined with my poor hearing, and he was telling me he was getting married soon, so I was saying "oh that sounds lovely". Fortunately he also found it funny when I realised what I'd accidentally agreed to.
I was in Medellin, Colombia, outside of the football stadium, trying to see where the rest of our friends were at before heading inside. A guy came up and was saying he was a big fan of one of the teams playing. He lifted his shirt to show me a really shitty tattoo of the team logo. I noticed there was a knife in his wasteband, but I was distracted because I was looking for friends. He asked for me for money and I casually said, "No, Gracias." and walked away. He started yelling at me with a lot of fun Colombian bad words. I was wondering why he was so mad and as I was walking away, I realized he was trying to threaten me with the knife.
There were a lot of people around and police all around us. Really ballsy on his part for even attempting something like that there.
If I did that in a different situation, I probably would have been stabbed.