A few years ago, I was walking back from my lunch break, when I felt what seemed like a piece of gravel hit my chest. I was wearing an overcoat, so it didn’t hurt, but it was a little weird. I looked around and then, without warning, I felt something hit me again.
This was around Carnegie Hall, which made everything a bit more surreal. The rocks, or whatever they were, could be thrown from just about anywhere, or by anybody. Except it seemed most likely they were coming at me from straight ahead.
Looking around, the only thing that seemed out of order was that there was a guy sitting in a white van–some kind of service vehicle–and he was trying not to look at me. He was in his twenties, and started reading a copy of the New York Post. And I could see that there was a brown bag in his lap, just as he lifted up the paper.
I didn’t quite understand what was happening, but I walked to the other side of the street, where the van was, and looked around.
I didn’t see anything, except the bumper sticker on the van that said, “HOW’S MY DRIVING?”. And I thought, if there was ever a time to all that number, it was now. While I was standing right behind the van, and could see the license plate.
“Yeah,” I said to the woman on the phone, “This might sound a little strange, but I think one of your drivers is throwing rocks at me, or something.”
This did not go over well. I was informed that whether or not the driver was throwing rocks at me had little to do with his driving ability.
“That seems like an unsound policy,” I said. Except that’s not what I said.
I said something like, “Right. Well, just in case someone’s interested, here’s the license plate number, which she had absolutely no interest in. But then the service vehicle took off.
It didn’t occur to me until a few minutes later that I was being shot at with a BB gun. And for no particular reason, other than I happened to be walking that direction. And on one hand, sure–it’s a BB gun. It’s not the most sinister thing. But it stings a little.
