Brown Eyed Girl

This morning I went in for my semi-annual dental cleaning. My dentist, like most routine health care providers, greeted me as you would an old friend. “Hi! How are you? So good to see you!”

“I’m doing great!” His greeting suggested that I had voluntarily decided to drop by and catch up. I was immediately taken to the back (the perks of a Saturday morning dental cleaning) and my dentist began with the cleaning. “Okay, open wide please. I’m going to start with a cleaning.” Upon opening my mouth I felt a fleeting pain on the side of my head. “You have such a happy smile,” my dentist commented as I let the pain pass.

It’s not usual that widely opening my mouth is accompanied with head pain. But not much of the last week of my life can be considered usual. On Monday I started a new job at a startup in San Francisco. Wow, how cliché does that sound? Might as well go all the way with the cliché: I absolutely love it. As I was making my breakfast in the office kitchen on Tuesday morning, an engineer introduced himself. “So this is what, Day 2?” I nodded. “How’s it going?”

“So far so good.”

“I bet you’re getting overwhelmed with information. Don’t worry. Everyone in this building has had a Day 2. And everyone except for you has had a Day 3.” As I tried to process his comment, I smiled and nodded. Whatever he was trying to say, I knew it was supposed to be encouraging.

“Hopefully I’ll make it to Day 3 as well.” Later that day, I realized that what I had meant as a joke doubled as ominous foreshadowing.

Walking home on Tuesday evening, I was deep in thought. Life is pretty great right now. I think this job is going to be great for me. And my book! I can’t believe I’ve written one! I smiled and fished my phone out of my pocket to call a friend while I walked. Perfect, I have catch-up time again. If there was one reason I had loved commuting to work, it was to call friends on the way home. It rang a couple times, and went to voicemail. Dammit. I ended the call and continued walking, phone in hand at my side.

As I approached an intersection about halfway home, I felt someone grab my wrist. What? That’s weird. I looked to my side to see a girl about my age. Who is this? What is going on? She lifted my wrist that held a phone, up to my head. We were eye to eye. Hers were hazel and fiercely alive. Mine, hidden by sunglasses, were squinting with tears. I felt empty and helpless. What is she trying to – SHIT. Before I could get my wits together, she, still gripping my wrist with one hand, slammed my head with her other.

“Oh my god!” I yelled at some onlookers as she snatched my phone and ran away. It was about 6:30 PM which meant that it was still completely bright outside. The onlookers are better defined as bystanders. If I know anything about human psychology, it’s that I shouldn't have expected any of them to help me. The bystander effect is a social psychological phenomenon that describes how a group of witnesses will not help a victim. In my opinion, this is the most depraved theory of psychology to have ever been proven.

I lifted my sunglasses and started walking, unsure what to do. Should I walk home? No. I don’t have a phone. Should I call my parents? The cops? My head was pounding.

One intersection further, I saw a security guard outside the San Francisco Art Institute.

“Excuse me sir? Um. Do you have a phone I can use? A girl just stole my phone and hit me on the head.” It felt like tattling. “I just want to call my parents.”

“You need to go down those stairs to the BART Station Police and call the cops,” he said matter-of-factly. Repelled by his nonchalance, I walked away to follow his directions. A member of the BART Station Police Squad handed me a flip phone to call the cops. I bet nobody would ever steal this, I thought as I dialed.

The cops, one male and one female, arrived before I had ended my phone call. The moment I saw them, my eyes welled with tears again.

"Are you okay?” One asked. I nodded. “Here. Let’s walk upstairs. Can you tell us what happened?” I told the story moment by moment, describing the girl and pausing deliberately every couple of words. It was the only way I could stop myself from crying. “Okay, if you were hit in the head, we need to call an ambulance,” one said.

“They’ll get here and check you. It seems like you’re physically okay. After they confirm, you can come around with us and we can try to find your phone and the girl.” What a joke. But nice of them to say. While we waited for the ambulance we experimented with “Find my iPhone.” My phone had already been turned off, making the application useless.

“It’s fine, whatever.” The cops seemed to care more about finding my phone than I did. I just felt violated. I pressed and rubbed my head. Shit. Ow. Ow. God damn that bitch. The ambulance arrived and I was one of those people on Market Street that everyone watches being taken into an ambulance.

“Hi dear. We’re just going to take your vitals. Chances are that everything is okay. But you were hit on the head. You don’t have to go to the hospital if you don’t want to, but I am going to ask you to track your headaches or any nausea over the next couple weeks. If anything feels weird, don’t ignore it. Go to your doctor and explain what happened. But again, it’s probably nothing. And remember, we’re only three numbers away.” They checked for bruises and swelling, took my blood pressure, and felt my pulse.

“Did you have any blurriness of vision? Did you blackout?”

“No. No.” As I looked around the ambulance, I remembered the story of Phineas Gage and how he had continued living after a railroad construction accident that sent an iron rod through his frontal cortex.

“What’s your pain level on a scale of one to ten?” the head paramedic asked.

“I don’t know, a six? I bet everyone says that right?”

“Funnily enough, no. People are like ‘I’m at a ten right now!!” I smiled. “What a genuine smile.” Typically, people exaggerate one-off pains for sympathy, but those with chronic pain play it down so as to avoid being perceived as complainers. 

“125 over 85,” another nurse reported from the back. “Yeah, we’ll be like okay, if ten means your dead, what is your pain level? And people will go, ‘Yes!! A ten!’” I was starting to feel a bit better. I’m okay. I’m alive.

"No brains gushing out,” the head paramedic chimed in. “Like I said, just track your pain over the next couple weeks. But most likely you’re fine.” I exited the ambulance. The cops were waiting for me outside.

“Do you mind riding around with us for a couple minutes? Let’s see if we can find her and your phone. We’ll drop you home afterwards.” Clifford the cop (I know, awesome name) opened the door of the police car.

“Sure I guess.” I hopped in (and holy shit, if you’ve ever had the misfortune of sitting in the back of a cop car, those seats are rock hard. It’s like they’re trying to make your arrest as miserable as possible).

“It’s your tax dollars going to work.” We rode around for about five minutes when there, walking down the sidewalk, was the suspect with two others.

“That’s her!” I couldn't believe she was milling around the crime scene. "We never catch the smart ones," they said as they turned on the sirens and made an abrupt turn. The cops jumped out of the car. She quickened her pace, but they grasped her and ordered her to her knees. They handcuffed her and had her walk up and down the sidewalk for me to confirm that it was her. “I don’t want to kick the wrong girl’s ass,” the female cop had joked as we started the search.

The suspect was taken by another police car to the station for questioning. They didn’t find my phone on her, but they found four others. She likely sold my phone in the thirty minutes that I was calling the cops and ambulance.

I rode back with “my cops” to speak with an investigator and take care of a couple other procedures that I am to keep confidential for now. Four hours after the incident, the cops drove me home while doing a mini-therapy session.

“You’ve experienced something really traumatic today. You’re the victim of a crime and it’s scary. I want you to know that this will never happen to you ever again. You’re going to be so alert now.” I started to cry. I don’t know why at this moment, but I think everything finally hit me. “Believe me, I was mugged at 15,” the female cop comforted. 

“Don’t think that this is a small thing just because we see it everyday. It’s huge when it happens to you. I’m really happy that we got one person off the streets. It’s really rare that we find these assholes,” Clifford added. He’s one of those guys whose not really into the whole empathy thing, but means well.

“Treat yourself well this week. Talk about this with your friends. Do something that makes you happy – work out or get a massage – whatever makes you smile. I guarantee that at least a couple times, little things are going to just flip your switch. This is a big thing that’s happened to you,” the female jumped back in.  “I’m so sorry this happened to you.”

“I’m sorry too.” I couldn’t get the image of the girl out of my head. There we were, eye to eye, that hazel-eyed girl with a strong grip and mean fist and me.

Once home, I ate an egg. I wasn’t hungry. I called my parents to tell them what had happened, analyzing each moment for what I could have done differently.

“It was broad daylight. And I was pretty alert. Maybe I could have let go of my phone sooner so she wouldn’t’ have hit me. I think I was just unlucky.” Victims of crimes like mine often experience behavioral self-blame, believing that they could have done something differently to have prevented the crime altogether. 

In the moment, my parents’ response was surprising. “Forget all that. Are you okay?”

After talking to my parents, I called a couple friends. “I forgot to tell you,” I joked with one, “my new job involves fighting crime on the streets of San Francisco.” Humor is my defense mechanism.

I woke up naturally at 6:30 the next morning feeling physically okay. Not amazing. Not perfect. But okay. I decided that I wanted to go to work. The environment makes me happy. Before work, I stopped at AT&T and bought a new phone.

“This is the number one reason that people come in for a new phone. You just can’t have those things out in public,” the sales representative told me.

“Lesson learned.” He handed me my phone and his iPad to sign my receipt. “It’s just money,” I said as I pressed “Confirm.” Life is all relative, and at that moment, I would have paid even a thousand dollars for a new phone. I was just happy to be alive.

The pain is starting to subside. I’m at that point where I’m doubting what I know, which is that she only hit me with her hand. How could a person inflict so much pain without the help of an instrument?! It will probably take a while for the vivid image of the girl to subside. And the incident will probably never fade from my memory.

I now take the historic trolley to work and I’ll be walking around (but without taking out my iPhone) in no time I’m sure. For now though, I’m paranoid as hell. I just sprinted from the bus stop to my house at 3 PM on a sunny Saturday.

The purpose of my recounting this story is not for sympathy. It’s to open your eyes to the fact that “It won’t ever happen to me,” is a debilitating cognitive bias. That this is a real issue but you can so easily prevent it from happening to you by simply keeping your phone out of sight in public. And if god forbid you ever find yourself in a similar situation, let go of all your belongings and run. The only thing in life that’s irreplaceable is life itself.

To the girl who stole my iPhone: Sorry about the scratch on my screen. That probably cost you. Sucks you got caught, too. And by the way, you can never steal my happy smile.