Met a friend for breakfast yesterday (or earlier today). This should almost go into the food blog; we went for the egg banh mi at Saigon Bakery. We ordered, and started a conversation, during which an old asian man came in and began asking other customers for money. We didn't pay him any attention until he began shouting at the workers behind the counter, something to the effect that they had stolen the store from him. He then became violent, picking things up from the counter and throwing them at the workers. At no time was anyone in any real danger of serious injury; the guy was substantially older and probably no more than 5'5" and 140 lbs, but I could feel my adrenalin start to kick in as I began to assess what I might need to do if he escalated and the odds that he might have a weapon. As it was, the workers responded by threatening to call the police, and the old man left.

I think I experienced to some degree what I've intellectually hypothesized as going on in the minds of the other people in the group, both during and after my attack. For me, there's a sense of closure; I suffered bodily harm, now I recuperate from that. But there's a sense of open-endedness to what I'm experiencing now, the alternative universe what-if scenarios. If he had been bigger and escalated, would I have interceded if someone was clearly in danger of being seriously hurt? And the reality is that I really just don't know, though the masculine ego wants to fantasize how I'd have closed with him executing a right elbow to the throat followed by a putar kepala, taking him down and going into a submission hold from behind....

Uh-huh. Or maybe I'd be wetting my pants!