How dangerous is it out there? VERY.
Over the past week I became aware of two true crime stories — stories on each coast of the U.S. of A.
ANSWERING YOUR DOOR AT NIGHT CAN BE HAZARDOUS FOR YOUR HEALTH:
My 30-something-ish nephew Aaron lives in downtown New Haven. One recent night around 10 he heard a knock on his door. When he opened it up, there was a tall guy with a bandana on his face holding a shotgun aimed right at him. The guy demanded his money then shot him in the leg.
Aaron had the presence of mind (and he had never been in the military) to grab the gun as he went down, so the guy smashed him on the head with it, and ran out the door. Aaron is now at home with a hole in his leg until doctors can decide how to treat it. And he required stitches to sew up his split head.
FACT: If you read news (like TMV does all the time) home invasions seem to be an increasing problem throughout the country. I’m told that Aaron always looked before opening his door. It’s sad to say one tiny error can cost you these days…becaue it’s so dangerous out there.
RISKING YOUR LIFE TO MAKE A HAM AND CHEESE SANDWICH
I love Subway sandwiches (the subs and the salads) and eat there almost every day. I used to go to a shop down near Texas Street and El Cajon Boulevard here in San Diego. Except it was such a pain. They had this huge, thick, ugly bullet proof glass separating customers from workers. And since there was no speaker, there were misunderstandings.
JOE: I’ll have a ham and cheese.
Sandwich Artist: Don’t worry you can sneeze.
JOE: No, I said a ham and cheese.
Sandwich Artist: So what do you want to eat today?
JOE: A HAM and cheese!
Sandwich Artist: Oh. Do you want cheese on that?
JOE: Yes!
Sandwich Artist: What?
JOE: YES!
Sandwich Artist: I still can’t hear. What do you want?
JOE: HAM AND CHEESE!
Sandwich Artist: Hold the cheese?
JOE: Look, I’ll just have a Coke.
Sandwich Artist: Do you want cheese on that?
So when a new one opened a bit closer to my house, I went there. And I always told them about how I hated the other place due to that awful bullet proof barrier.
That place came under new management and they took off the bullet proof shield. And they were robbed almost immediately.
I talked about it at the other Subway place. “Were you ever robbed?” I asked the manager. “No, we’re lucky!” she told me.
A day later her store was robbed. So now the first Subway is putting back its bullet proof shield. And the one I go to has already put one up (but they put a speaker on theirs, so sometimes when I order I move my lips and don’t make any sounds, throwing them off as they tap the speaker to see if it’s on the blink).
“I never want to go through that experience again, with someone pointing a gun at me,” a worker told me.
FOOTNOTE: They think its the same crook who has been robbing these stores, which are close to a highway exit. But all this underlines the fact that even making a ham and cheese sandwich these days could be hazardous to your life…unless you cut down those bad odds by making it behind a big, fat sheet of bulletproof glass.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.