Monday, May 15, 2006

Graduation Parties, Muggings

I attended a graduation party this weekend made up of people that, for the most part, I did not know. After a couple drinks and a belly full of food, I was happy to attain fly-on-wall status – observing, day dreaming, eating peanuts.

The conversation weaved around embarrassing moments of the graduate’s childhood, chemistry, Mountain Dew, Columbus, and at some point - muggings. This got me thinking…

Why haven’t I been mugged? Now, I’ve been plenty of places where that kind of thing wouldn’t be too much of a surprise, but it just hasn’t happened. Maybe muggers can pick up on the fact that I studied martial arts for years (two years – just enough to deserve the plural).

Nah, that can’t be it. I never really studied any animal styles like TIGER style that might lead to a detectable confidence in my gait. I’m not sure if I made it anything past the little known, seldom-feared HAIRY EARTHWORM style. That’s right, I’m far less a fierce jungle predator than fishing bait.

Eureka that’s it! The reason I have never been mugged is because I look like easy pickin’s, too-good-to-be-true, come-and-rob-me bait. I am such a target for being mugged that potential muggers assume that somebody has already beaten them to my passport and pocket change.

I’m too good to be true.


No one did ask me whether I had ever been mugged or not. I doubt I would have arrived at an answer better than “Nope.” By the time I worked-out why it was that I hadn’t been mugged the conversation had turned back to embarrassing stories about the graduate, which got me thinking some more…

Which is the lesser evil: being mugged, or having your family tell stories about you growing up to all your friends and any flies-on-the-wall in listening distance?

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