Today was the day I almost got myself beaten up in downtown Montreal.
I was walking home after watching the movie "The Stepford Wives". I then decided to go into a little grocery store along Ste. Catherine's Street with the intention of buying myself an apple and two more apples for the a panhandling couple sitting outside the store.
All is well, I go into to store and pick out a few nice looking granny smiths, and pay my dollar fifteen. When I get outside, I see theses two hobo’s arguing then the one push the other one down. I watch as the one falls down in slow motion, I’m sure his drunken state is not conducive to balance. The hobo who pushed the other one down is yelling at him and I decide to get involve being the nice guy that I am. I figure none of the watching tourists/locals are trying to stop this (maybe it was the bystander effect), I may as well.
I go over to the guy who pushed the other guy down and try to get him to move along, at this point he decides he doesn’t like me and tries to hit me. I jump out of the way but I am really unable to stop him from yelling and approaching the other guy on the ground, mainly because I’m scared of him attacking me if I get too close. But I still continue to try to get him to stop while maintaining a safe distance. At this point a nice 6’5” 300lb black guy decides to come over and help me out, against the advice of his girlfriend who keeps telling him to leave. He basically stands towering over the guy challenging him. This make the guy decide to get moving and continue on his way down the street.
It was a rather interesting experience for me. As I’ve never been in a fight before and really don’t have any concept of what is involved in a fight. It would have been interesting to see what would have happened if I had, had to defend myself. Thankfully I didn’t, but I still wonder how I would have done.
As for the two apples I had purchased for the couple outside the store, I didn’t feel like giving it to them when there was now three of them (the guy who got pushed down by the other guy) so I continued on my way and ended up giving the apples to some other people sitting on a corner panhandling.