Being a suburbanite living in an urban world takes some getting used to. One big thing is getting used to walking . . . a lot. Walking to the grocery, walking with all your laundry to the Laundromat, walking to work, walking in the sun, walking in the rain, walking even after it gets dark--this is where it starts to get uncomfortable. As the days get shorter and shorter and as Daylight Savings Time ends (wah!) walking alone after dark is a fact of my new life.
Although I do not travel through any seriously dangerous neighborhoods on my way home from work, I still have points where I feel less safe than others. At those times I review in my head how I would deal with a potential attacker. This seems to give me some confidence. I think about my martial arts classes. I think about possible weapons I might be carrying. Then I form a plan for the evening. Somehow this makes me feel safer, even though it is a rather morbid method. For example, the last two days have been rainy. So I carried with me an umbrella, which gave me great confidence as its dual use a possible weapon. Today, however, I was carrying persimmons. I had not even noticed my new habit of planning a way to fend off attackers until I caught myself pondering the dangerous aspects of persimmons. I was carrying four of them: they weren’t heavy, hard, or sharp. So, my plan for the night suddenly became more realistic: give the guy my purse and try to stay calm.
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