Getting mugged/pickpocketed and having my phone stolen - I was in a foreign country, didn’t speak the language well and lost a lot of precious pictures that I didn’t have time to backup (Google was being a fucking bitch and prioritizing storing some long videos I’d tried to mark as excluded from backup). It felt violating, especially for how cheap my phone was.
While I was working downtown one summer, I stopped off in a CVS in the center of the main part of the city to buy some water.
On my way into the store I walked past a homeless black man. He had on a thigh-length coat with a hoodie under it, jeans, and boots that were half laced. The cornea of one eye was milky, presumably damaged at some point and probably blind or nearly so.
I grabbed my water and went to the back of the line, a few feet from that homeless guy. He got a look at me and said with a giant smile “Hi Death_Equity!” like greeting an old friend. I said “Hey man.” hiding how surprised I was and he walked away. I was too caught off guard to find out who he was, I was reeling that he knew my name. I have no idea who he was, but he somehow knew my name. I didn’t have a name tag on, nobody else was in the store with me that could have said my name, I didn’t have a credit card out that he could have read. He either was a voodoo priest who gave his eye for sight beyond sight, or he is someone who knew me and I did not know or recognize him.
When I got back to the truck, I told my coworker about it and was fairly freaked out about this random half-blind homeless guy that knew me by name.
I have spent hours since trying to figure out who that man was to me. I feel horrible knowing that he must have been someone I knew and have forgotten about him as society has. Maybe I went to school with him as a kid? Maybe I met him through work before he was homeless? I wish I knew, but he surprised the fuck out of me.
I understand being too freaked out to ask how he knew you, plus probably not wanting the interaction and having to get back to work, but like… damn. I know I’d have asked, I’d be too curious not to and I’d feel bad for blanking him if we did know each other. My partner hates that I engage with randoms like that though, so maybe I’m too blase about it?
I was sitting in my car in the parking lot of the beer store, playing a game on my phone, procrastinating on my mission to buy beer.
I had locked the door from pure paranoia (I’m just a paranoid guy).
A guy on the sidewalk stepped onto the parking lot and walked toward my car. I thought little of it, but I noticed. He got closer and closer, and then he grabbed the handle and tried to open the driver-side door.
It was locked so he casually kept walking like everything was normal.
It was broad daylight. I still have no idea what he would have done if the door had been unlocked. But I was sitting and in the more vulnerable position.
I had a similar experience. I was maybe 17, driving alone at night to choir practice. Stopped at a red light on an empty street and a guy walked straight up to my car and tried to open the passenger door. It was locked and thankfully the light turned green a second later. I peeled out.
When my brother and I were pretty young, my dad once left us in the car to run in fast and grab something from a grocery store. (I know, bad, but this was several decades ago. It was more normal back then.)
While he was gone, an older man came up to our car and started aggressively trying to unlock the door.
My brother and I froze in fear and just watched as he kept trying to unlock the door. We had unbuckled ourselves to play while my dad was inside, so we were on the floor.
We both just shrunk down into the floor and hid silently, not knowing what to do.
After probably 30 seconds, he put his hands up over his eyes and looked in the car window, then made a frustrated sound and quickly left.
Once our dad came back a few minutes later, my brother and I told him what happened. We were pretty freaked out.
He said the man was probably just confused because he was elderly and thought it was his car. I think that makes sense, but as little kids alone, it was still really scary.
The main thing I’d be concerned about is if it’s hot. I always wait in a car if someone is going into a shop or something like that as I’m lazy as fuck and can’t be arsed walking around.
I was out in the garden when a dude waked by. One of us waved, I don’t remember which, and the other waved back, sort of neighborly one hand up for a second wave. By the time he crosses the bush, he has turned back to cross my (luckily fairly large) yard, walking towards me. I run inside, and lock the door and yell at my SO to come downstairs there was a scary man at the door. SO confronts the man while I hide. Dude makes up a story about how someone yelled at him from our balcony, and he thought it was his friend. SO says he doesn’t believe him, and he better not show his face around here again if he wants to make it home alive.
Different places right? Where I live you’re as like to get shot as not for approaching someone’s house on foot at night without announcing who you are and why you’re there.
Someone came stealthily up to our gate late at night once when my partner was alone in the side yard. Dog ran him off when he tried to open the gate, but I don’t like to think what might have happened if he wasn’t out with her. There is literally zero chance he was there for any legitimate reason and she was clearly visible in a light at the back of the property.
Sometimes there’s just something that seems wrong. Why did the man turn back? Why did he then claim someone had called out to him? The OP felt something was off and acted on it.
A stranger trying to grab me by the back of my neck as I rode past on my bicycle. He got ahold of my hoodie but didn’t have a good grip. I got away and pedalled like hell.