Attack in TO

Well, it happens to everyone at some point, I suppose.

On the weekend, I guess I was involved in skirmish of sorts. It was midnight around Bathurst and Harbord. We were walking our friend home past a school yard and someone there made a lot of noise, so of course we looked. Some kid playing tough guy comes out and starts swearing and harassing us and acting like a charicature -- what you'd say if you were joking around pretending to be an asshole I'm-so-tough kid.

Clearly, there was something wrong with the kid as we were three old-ish people walking along with our bikes. We don't look like a bunch of trouble makers by any stretch. He was probably bored and had some unused hormones raging. He was calling us bitches and telling us to mind our own business and stop looking at him and blah blah blah.


A bit ridiculous when you think of the fact that he's actually yelling at us as we're already walking by, minding our own business. Whatever. At some point, our friend gets fed up with the verbal diarrhea and says something back.

Encouraged, tough-kid yells back something stupid in some limited vocabulary. And so on until my friend drops his bike and his bag and chases after the kid. I stop, turn to see what's going on and sigh. Nothing good can come of it because this kid isn't likely to learn a lesson from my friend. Of course, he goes and gets his bigger friends and suddenly my friend is running away. Not good. Getting scarier. Gordon calls 911 on his phone. I walk back towards the bike and bag, hoping no one gets any funny ideas about them or me.

They realize Gordon's calling the cops and go after him, yell about getting his iPhone and then hit it out of his hands. Gordon tells them he's already called and the phone is GPS-enabled. Some more blah blah blah and stupidity. Finally the cops show up at the end of the lane. The kids run off. We keep walking.

Stupid.
And scary, frankly. I've always said that I feel so safe in Toronto. And no one was physically assulted in the end. But the whole escalation could have been avoided if there were less weirdo tough-guys looking for attention (unlikely, but a wish) and if we'd just ignored them.