Okay, this pic might be a little too much, but I promise the last hour I thought I needed boxing gloves.
Twice!
This morning I used up the last of the cat food bag for Michi and knew I needed to get some more for the morning so about sundown I decided I needed to walk down to the supermarket about ten minutes away that had “his” brand.
A block away from home I was following a young couple in their 20s. As I got closer the man started wrapping his arms around her waist and she appeared to be lightly fighting him off. I thought it was just a little romantic play with him probably kissing her on the way home on a Sunday evening.
As I got closer, she became louder and a bit more insistent in pushing him away. When I reached them, she started kicking him hard and yelling. His phone went flying and I had to step between them.
He looked a bit intoxicated — a common occurrence on Sundays here — as he gave me a thumbs up as if to say everything was okay. I looked at the woman and she went off with a stream of Spanish that I didn’t understand. When I told her I didn’t understand, she said something to the man. I asked if she needed help and she said no, so I slowly backed away watching them.
They sat down on the street curb next to each other and began talking. A woman across the street had come out from her store. I told her that the woman didn’t want any help and she just shrugged her shoulders as if to say, “what else can you do?”
[NOTE: When I returned home about 20 minutes later they were still sitting on the curb. She gave me a thumbs up as I passed, but didn’t look too happy.]
About 3 minutes after that I was walking up the hill just before home. Three young people — two guys and a girl — in their 20’s were walking down. They caught my attention because the guys were talking loud and one wasn’t wearing a face mask.
As I approached, one dropped a liquor bottle he was carrying. Obviously drunk, his partner picked up laughing and then threw it into the middle of the street intending to scatter more glass there.
I started to walk past, but saw some big pieces of glass with a car coming so I walked out into the road to kick the ones I could see to the curb while holding up my hand to stop oncoming traffic. (If you know Peruvian drivers, that last thing was probably the stupidest thing I did all day!)
One of the two guys stopped and looked back at me and I said “idiota” loud enough to be heard. He froze and, while removing the glass, I called them “pendejos.”
My adrenaline was already pretty high and having some punk, drunk, maskless kid threaten me shot it up even more. He started to walk towards me and I said “tu quieres nada conmigo”. That was easily the second dumbest thing I could have done with a young guy approaching and his partner close behind, but under the circumstances I didn’t have anything better to do than bluff.
I started to walk off and he continued to follow so I stopped again and faced him when he was about 20 feet away. I don’t know if his intention was to come after me or not because he started kicking more glass out of the road. At that point I continued on up the hill and they went the other way.
After the last week of dealing with asshole anti-mask trolls on Facebook, I’d hit my limit and wasn’t going to back down. It wasn’t a matter of being brave either time. It was simply a matter of standing up to bad people.
At least Michi will have fresh breakfast when he gets out of bed tomorrow morning!
