A STABBED WALK

09.10.04


I was talking on the phone to my friend Giorgos a few hours ago. He told me that he was recently the victim of a clumsy attack by robbers who were holding knives and tried to steal his mobile phone and take his money. Giorgos was carrying neither technological assets nor money. Even if the robbers weren’t sought after by some guard (as it finally happened), they would have ended up with nothing in their pockets after this pointless attempt. My friend –as I do- counted carefully the Euros, and yet he would hesitate to sacrifice even his last coin had it been for his life.

As obvious, those who believe that they are in danger only if they are in New York or in Mexico are wrong. It’s now certain that all kinds of creeps are all over the place. Wherever you go, you will see two eyes giving you a bad look, as if they intend to bump you off just by looking at you. I wonder what I would do if I was the victim of a robbery on the street. All right, other than making my prayer I wouldn’t do anything else. I would not react at all; not just because I recognize my weakness but because I don’t give a damn about my fortune in cases like that. What do you want, boys? My mobile? My money? Take it all and spend it well. That’s all I needed, to be stabbed for the sake of Nokia!

In such cases, though, I wonder if there is some kind of self-defence that I could learn in order to defend myself. The more I think about it, the more impossible it seems to be. Whatever, after what happened to my friend, I understood one thing again: There are times when luck is on the side of those who don’t have it and not of those who have it.