This lady tried to MACE me tonight!!!

humpty wrote:

I've always assumed that this is going to happen to me at some point. People always freak out when I run up behind them...usually in a park where they should be expecting runners!

There's actually a park near where I live that doesn't allow running. I wrote an article that was published in the Milwaukee paper on how this was a stupid rule and was flooded with e-mail from angry senior citizens.

Show us some of the choice angry emails.

I ran at a place once that was an arboritum. I always ran early in the morning. I was also told that I was not allowed to run there one day by the caretaker. He said it was for walking only and that I would scare all of the birds away for the bird watchers. It was a drizzly morning in December. He and I both knew there were no bird watchers there.

You should have filed an assault complaint with the police. And who knows where that could have gone-carrying concealed weapon, etc. She probably will get someone else.

Check It Out wrote:

You know a lot of "rape" cases occur because the girl changes her mind AFTER the fact. How fair is that?!

Well, if that happens then it isn't rape. If someone fully consensually has sex, then that's what counts. It's unfortunate there are cases like these because 1. it's putting blame on an innocent man 2. it detracts and goes some way to invalidate the massive number of actual rapes that happen.

People seem to freak out the most on trails (screaming, jumping, getting into a fighter's stance, etc.). Used to scuff my shoes on the ground as I approached, but some were still completely oblivious. Now I call out a super-friendly "beep, beep, coming through" way in advance. That's worked well for me...except for the guy with the ipod last week. It took me a little time to figure out why he was ignoring me. Probably best to speed up when passing the ipod listeners.

It seems like the people who spook most easily are the ones walking alone on forest trails at night... I'll never get it.

i've used the friendly "on your left!" and that scares people to death too. one time it was late at night, like around 11:00 and these two women were out walking their dogs. i tried the shoe scuffing and the coughing but they didn't get it so when i was about 20 ft away from them i said "on your left" and they screamed and dropped their dog leashes and the dogs started running away. i felt kind of badly, but it really wasn't my fault so I said "sorry you were frightened, that's why i tried to warn you in advance," helped them catch their dogs, and was on my way!

magic johnson wrote:

you had every right to be pissed, dude. mace is no joke. Besides, SHE was the moron wearing headphones. If you have a weapon like that (yes, i do think of mace as a weapon), then you should use it responsibly. Clearly, listening to her ipod had greatly diminished her ability to do so. Her fault.

What she did was assault. If the mace had hit you then it was assault and battery. Fortunately it wasn't a gun in her hand.