A few months ago, I left work a little late one day to pick up my daughter, so I was walking really fast, if not running. All of sudden a black guy walking in front of me moved quickly toward the direction that I was going to pass by him (without looking back). Of course I tried hard to avoid him. People who played Ping-Pong with me can testify that my lateral quickness is reasonably good; still I barely touched him. Incidentally he was holding a pair of glasses, which subsequently fell down on the ground after the mild collision. I didn’t think the impact was strong enough to cause the fall, but said sorry anyway and continued walking. Within a few steps, the guy caught up with me and said, “Hey, my glasses were broken by you…” There was a dent in one side of the glasses, but I wasn’t sure it’s caused by the fall. I knew I was into something, but I didn’t want to waste any time as my daughter was waiting in day care center. So I decided to buy peace. The only question is how much. It was a relatively trivial negotiation. When I took out a $20 bill, I managed to comfort myself with what people would usually quip: “…that’s why they pay you the big bucks.”

As a philosopher put, you can’t walk into the same river twice. Not true.

Last Thursday night, I was walking towards the subway on a perfectly normal pace, when suddenly a black guy walking in front of me moved into my direction; (co-)incidentally, a pair of glasses fell down to the ground from his hands as the result of the “collision”. In a split of seconds, I realized what’s going on. This time I didn’t even bother to say anything, because David Stern would easily rule that it’s block instead of charge. I walked straight ahead, anticipating the greetings from behind. In a few seconds, I decided to run before he even had a chance. Right before I entered subway tunnel, I looked back. The guy was chasing me. What a surprise. For once I didn’t complain about the subway because there’s a train waiting there for me. I quickly boarded the train. The guy actually went down as well, but eventually turned back, possibly because he didn’t even have a metro card.

It was a rather enjoyable experience for me, I guess, as my average loss over such events was trimmed down to $10 from $20.