Published: August 20, 2008 12:57 am            

DUVALL: Theft, fear and a simple reality

It’s true what they say about how your attacker always seems to come out of nowhere.

I was walking down my street, Richmond Avenue in Buffalo, after having met friends at a bar. It wasn’t that late, just 11:30 p.m.

There were people everywhere. Dogs on leashes. Cars driving slowly down a leafy Buffalo thoroughfare. People on bicycles and porches, enjoying the nicest Saturday night of the summer.

Then one of those people appeared, from where I don’t know. Walking just a stride behind me, but in my blind spot, so I couldn’t see him. Then I felt a hand on my shoulder and the blade of a knife at my neck.

All those people who’d surrounded me as I wandered home had melted away. It was just him and I. A bustling neighborhood suddenly quiet, until he said “empty your pockets.”

I threw my cell phone and cigarette pack on the ground.

“Back pocket, too.”

“You’re not going to get anything,” I said in vain. “What are you going to do? Kill me? For what?”

He spun me around to face him, still pointing the switchblade at my chest.

“Now back up.”

“Seriously?” I said again. “You’re not — “

He’d had enough of my talk and lunged with the knife. As I stepped back, the few feet separating us seemed not large enough. I shut my mouth. He picked up my wallet and cell phone and ran away.

If it took 30 seconds, it was a lot.

At least he wasn’t a smoker. He left the pack behind and as he ran off, I reached down to pick it up. I looked around for someone. The first people I came to were more scared than me, walking away quickly after saying they couldn’t help.

Then two women on a second-story balcony a few houses away called down.

“What happened? Did you just get robbed?”

“Yeah, kinda,” I said sheepishly.

I replayed the incident shouting up to their balcony. They came down and gave me their phone to call the police. While we waited, they told me a funny story about a mugging. While living in New York City, they went on vacation, only to have the dog-sitter call to say their pet had died. They gave instructions to bring the remains to the vet. On the way there, the dog-sitter was robbed — the thug making off with a suitcase with the dead dog in it.

We were laughing by the time the police officer came. Tall and sturdy, the officer asked me questions about what took place in a quiet, reassuring tone. He said he might even have driven by while it happened because he was so close when the call came in.

I gave him the description of the guy, as best I could. My assailant was shorter than me, which I found odd. Usually you think of a mugger as big and menacing. He really wasn’t either of those things, and even when he had the knife to my neck I wasn’t scared. Far from machismo, I’m as surprised as anyone by my reaction. More accurately, I was stunned — and mad.

Scarier than the act of being robbed at knifepoint is the realization afterward that I’ve still not fully come to about how much worse it could have been. The knife blade on my neck could have slipped. He could have stabbed me when he lunged. For the first time in my life, I can say with uncomfortable certainty that I could have died.

Even now it seems more dreamlike than real. Were it not for the lack of a wallet or cell phone, I might think the whole thing was a figment of my imagination.

My roommate remarked at how calm I was recounting the story after the officer dropped me back home. At that point, not quite as sleepy as I’d been before I left for home, we went out for a drink. My friendly neighborhood watering hole was salve on the mental wound. Within five minutes of walking in the door, I was among friends, laughing about it. After the story was told, a round on the house and a simple toast: “Glad you’re OK.”

So now what? Do I put padlocks on all my doors, bars on all my windows? Treat everyone like a suspect? Move to a “safer” neighborhood?

Nah, then the terrorists win.

I lost the contents of my wallet and a cell phone. I gained the quiet confidence that comes only after having nearly lost so much more. I was reminded of this fragile life’s simplest metric for success: If this day was your last, would you be proud of it?

Funny how the blade of a knife can really sharpen the senses.

Managing Editor Eric DuVall’s column appears every Wednesday and Sunday. Contact him at

693-1000, ext. 112 or by e-mail to duvalle@gnnewspaper.com.

        

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