Mugged!

This past Friday, PBC was having an end-of-the-season get together at the boathouse, down in Georgetown. (A rich, clean, happening part of Washington, D.C.) I left at about midnight, walked to my car which was about 3 blocks down a well-lit Water street. I get about halfway there and I start hearing quick footsteps. All of a sudden these two guys came up behind me on my left side, one hit me. I didn't know what was going on, I thought it was just some random violence, some guys looking for someone to beat up, so I turned around and started running, hoping to make it back to the boathouse.
But, come on, I'm not going to outrun a young black guy in a sprint. I might have held him off long enough to score a touchdown, but life's not like football. (probably a good thing, if it were like football I might have ended up like sean taylor) So he catches up to me, tackles me, hits me a few times, yells at me then grabs my wallet out of my back pocket and they run the other way.
All things considered, I'm fine. Things could have gone much worse, and I didn't end up with any real bruising, though I couldn't chew on Saturday. I canceled all my cards over the phone right away, so I didn't have to worry about that.
The fact that it happened on a well-lit street, at 12:30 (early evening by DC standards) and in Georgetown all make it very surprising. So surprising, in fact, that when I called the police, the dispatcher sent them to Southeast DC, probably assuming that there was no way I was talking about Northwest. The police made up for that delay by sending four squad cars and a detective.

Repeating the scenario, in my mind it seems like what happened was really best. (This is a nice corollary to the prisoner's dilemma.) I'm not a big guy, but surely high school wrestling plus being in rowing shape would have given me some kind of hope in a fight. So lets say I had just fought back right away. Well, I know that if I were going to go around mugging people, I'd have some sort of a backup plan in the form of a knife or a gun in case I came across a guy who did fight back. So, either I would've gotten beat up pretty bad (there were two of them) or worse - and they still probably would have gotten my wallet. So, then what if I'd been equally equipped with a gun or a knife, the way any real red-blooded 'murcan should be. Well, they were ready for what was about to happen, I wasn't so they would have had the edge. My first chance to draw would have been when they turned and fled after the fact, which would pretty much be murder any way you slice it. And of course, in any of the above scenarios where they succeeded in the robbery part, well, now they have my driver's license with my home address and can come find me for revenge. Even if they didn't get the wallet, the chances are very high (like 1) that I'll be back in that very same area.

Nevertheless, I would have greatly preferred the good old fashioned robbery at knife/gunpoint/threat. I could have just forked over the cash, kept my wallet, license, ID (most upset about the student ID, it's my only way to pretend I'm still an NC State student), scuba certification and hunter safety course certificate. (never know when you'll need those). The constant rehashing of the scenario is rather frustrating; I've never before been able to really empathize with people who have been the victim of a crime.

I'm avoiding getting angry or disillusioned about the whole thing by choosing to believe that these guys really needed the money for their mom's diabetes medication so she could live through the holidays. (I first thought antiretrovirals, but that sounds like I'm wishing AIDS on her which doesn't sound as compassionate.)

I suppose that, absent always walking around with a huge PBC oarsman, the only thing I could have done differently would have been to carry less cash.

Postlude:
On Tuesday I received in the mail a package containing a wallet, with all my cards (minus my metro SmartTrip... but, it wasn't my wallet.


[During my last trip to Raleigh, Danny, Dave Hoffman, Steve Marks, and I were having a discussion about wallets: about how Steve finally got his down from George Costanza-size, Dave's is a double-George, and Danny's was impressively slim. I've been pretty good about keeping mine minimalist; I even went as far as to throw away some old receipts, notes, and driving directions on the spot. But I was still ridiculed for carrying the diving card and the hunting card on me. Well, Danny, for a good 3 days you could have really laid it on thick with the "I told you so." But, since I got it back, lesson un-learned.]

It was sent to me by someone who had found it in Farragut Square, not very close to the site of the attack. This leads to so many new questions! Why the other wallet? Is this the mugger's wallet, and he just liked mine better? Why not just keep his too then? How did it get to Farragut? Did they just throw it out of a car window? Why not just throw it all away? Why put it in any wallet? It was interesting that they were smart enough not to use the debit card, I guess the TV news reports tipped them off to that one.

So, some lessons for society:
1) Balance of whether or not to put the address on the license. If not, I wouldn't have gotten my stuff back in the mail. But, if they'd wanted to get me good, the muggers could have rolled up to my house and who knows what. I suppose the finders could turn stuff (without an address) in to the police, and the police could take charge of getting it back.
2) The news never should have ran any stories about criminals getting caught by using the debit card. They should have just kept that on the DL, maybe more criminals would get caught in the future?

If you have any theories about the returned wallet, boy howdy would I love to hear them.