It was an early morning rush hour and the bus was crowded, so when I felt someone nudge me, I didn’t give it too much thought. I turned to see who it was and had to look up to get a glance at the face of the person that had nudged me. Something about the way the tall man looked at me didn’t feel right. I moved away from him and made my way towards the rear exit of the bus; my stop was coming up.

As I made my way down the stairs, I felt a heavy weight in the middle of my back. Someone had pushed me with all their might down the stairs and into oncoming traffic. I’ll give you 3 guesses as to who pushed me. If you guessed the tall man, you’re correct. Maybe I would’ve been bounced between a car or two, or maybe I would’ve only lost some teeth and busted my face open when my face made contact with the road.  We will never know luckily for me, my guardian angel was on the ball; a truck stopped right in front of me and broke my fall, preventing me from landing directly in front of oncoming traffic. Ever heard the expression “I feel like I’ve been hit by a truck”? I kind of sort of now knows what it means on a small scale. I hit the side of the truck full force with my body. Oomph! That hurt!

Thinking he had knocked the wind out of me, the man jumped on me and tore the book bag off my shoulder. I managed to turn myself around and hold onto one strap of the bag with my hand and fight him off with my other hand. The dude was trying to hit me. “Cabron, let go of my fucking bag!” I yelled at him and then let loose a string of curses in English and Spanish thank you very much that would’ve made a sailor proud. Our struggle continued until my grip slipped and he took off running. I quickly gave chase; he looked over his shoulder and seemed shocked that I was running after him and gaining on him. I wasn’t chasing him because the bag contained essentially what was my academic life that semester. I was chasing based on principle, the bastard had pushed me into rush hour traffic! I was pissed off as hell.

“I am so going to fuck you up when I catch you!” I yelled at him. All of a sudden, a Mass Transit Authority worker came out of nowhere and tackled the would-be robber from the side. My book bag sailed through the air and I was sure the laptop would be shattered on impact. I snatched my bag off the floor and rushed towards the man ready to dispense a very thorough ass kicking when a pair of arms wrapped themselves around me, “Calmate nena, calm down little girl.” Where the hell did he come from? Another MTA worker said as he pulled me back towards his chest. By the time the cops got there several people were restraining me to keep me from hitting the guy. When he saw the approaching cop cars the robber panicked and tried to fight his way out of the situation and got his ass handed to him by the MTA guy.

The officers were pretty quick about it and as soon as I’d given my statement and thanked everyone for their help I got on the next bus and headed to my internship. My laptop, by the way, survived without a scratch. I wasn’t so lucky; I was sore and bruised from running into the truck.

Note: Back in college, I had a blog (Mia Shaken Not Stirred) at some point I got locked out and was never able to get back in and I stopped blogging. I recently took a look at my old blog and the stories still cracked me up so I decided to repost my favorites here.

Originally published:Friday, February 06, 2009