Criminals are a cowardly, superstitious lot.

I haven’t been posting much in the last week or so, basically because I’ve been busy (but very very productive) at work, and I don’t want to post boring minutiae about IP network architecture and whatnot. So I haven’t had much to say of any interest, even to my friends.

Now I do.

While walking from my parked car to meet friends for coffee on friday night, a young gentleman stepped away from his two friends and moved, grinning, to stand directly in front of me. I moved sideways … and he moved sideways. Deliberately. I moved the other way .. and he moved the other way. He didn’t say anything at all but he was definitely, if I may use the vernacular, All Up In My Grill.

Indeed, those were my exact thoughts, as I shouldered my way around him, which is probably why I didn’t say “Excuse me”, but instead said “Out the way, fool.” – possibly a mistake on my part.

A couple of steps later, I felt a significant impact in the middle of my back, just below the shoulderblades. Enough of an impact to knock me over, anyway. And I’m not small. I presume he’d just kicked me in the back.

I got up as quickly as I could, moved right up in close to him, and punched him as hard as I could, in the face. I don’t think he was expecting to be hit, I suspect the usual custom with the kind of people who do this sort of shit is a bit of back and forth about how they’re going to beat on the other one, and comments about their respective mothers, etc. But I’m not a super-villain, I’m not interested in a monologue. Anyway, he didn’t really try to defend himself – he started to raise an arm to block, but I was very very close, and he didn’t manage it in time.

I’m not at all fit, nor am I any kind of fighter, but I am big guy, and I have had a some training at a couple of different martial arts places over the years – I know how to throw a punch, and this one had my hips and shoulders into it, and it had a LOT of weight behind it. Landed square on the side of his jaw, and he dropped like a puppet with cut strings.

I step back, look at his friends still leaning against the building, they look at me, and then they both pick the guy up, and walk off supporting him, like they do it every damn day.

So, I wander off to coffee and spend the next two or three hours shivering in my seat, looking out for the rozzers, and burning adrenaline as rapidly as I can. Also, my hand hurts, though it doesn’t seem to be damaged, and I can still type[1] fine with it.

That’s the first time anything like that has happened to me in Auckland, in the last ten years or so. I don’t know what that dude was trying to do, he didn’t ask for money, he didn’t want my car keys, in fact neither he nor his friends said a word! I think he just wanted to fuck with someone in order to get some excitement. I trust he’s received enough of it.