Imaginary Muggers

I was just wondering what I should do with my phone.

I went for a walk last night.  I left my house around midnight and returned after 2 am.  When you have a wacky schedule like I do, you have to do what you have to do.  I walked up and down the streets and then through the dark park that’s about a mile away.  The park is larger enough so it takes me about 25-30 minutes to walk all the way around it, so I did that twice after walking up and down a few streets.  Oh by the way, after walking for two hours, it began to rain so I ended up running home from the park. 

 There wasn’t much action last night.  There were a few people out, but not as many as a Friday or Saturday night.  Apparently walking in the middle of the night is a very Mars/Venus kind of thing.  Based on reactions I have gotten by telling such things, it seems that women seem to be more concerned by such an event than guys.  Women claim to be “worried,” I guess because of safety issues.  For some reason they associate walking in the darkness with getting mugged.  I could be wrong, but I think you can also get mugged in broad daylight.  Perhaps it has something to do with the unknown, like the monster under the bed or in the dark closet. 

Guys on the other hand don’t seem to care as much because we are naturally macho and brave and have less fear.  Either that or we’re more ignorant and dim-witted, take your pick.  Most guys you tell that you were walking in the middle of the night might ask where you were going or if you stepped in any puddles or something like that.  They might ask what shoes you wore or maybe even if you had a reflector vest on for safety.  They would never tell you they were worried because guys don’t get worried about things that are not worth worrying about.  By guys, I’m talking about non-gay guys here, the ones without feelings.

The worried female thinks if you are stupid enough to go walking the streets in the middle of the night, you should at least take your dog and/or your cell phone with you.  I may have a sign on the fence in my yard that says “Beware of Dog,” but that was there when I moved in.  I don’t have a dog to protect me from imaginary muggers.  I do however have a cell phone, but I don’t know what to do with it.

I thought about this on my walk last night.  If I brought my cell phone, am I supposed to walk with it turned on or off?  I would never expect a call at that time of night because most normal people are probably either sleeping or have mistaken me for a normal person that is probably sleeping.  (Trust me, I’m nowhere near normal).  If I put aside the notion of a casual conversation at 1 am with someone who should probably be sleeping, the only other purpose for the phone would be in case of emergency, like say if I got mugged. 

If I consider the mugging option, I wondered if it would be better to have my phone on at the ready.  Perhaps I could thwart their efforts with something like, “Here, don’t beat me up and I’ll let you call anywhere in the world you want for free.  That’s right…Cuba, Jamaica, Africa, China, South America, Trenton…where ever you want.  No problem, man.”

I somehow doubt if that would work.  I don’t own a Blackberry or I-phone so I don’t think I’d be getting mugged for my cheap Tracphone.  Minutes on my phone are precious to me.  I don’t have a normal phone because I don’t use it often.  I have the kind that I pay for minutes in advance and right now there are not very many left on it.  I figured if I got mugged and they took my phone, they would surely call everyone they know and use up all my minutes.  That would get me more upset than the mugging itself because I already paid for those minutes.  My only hope would be that they think it’s a normal phone that could be traced and maybe even has a GPS tracker so they might make a quick call to a buddy in prison and then ditch it.  Can prisoners receive calls at 1 am?

My other option was to take my phone, but leave it turned off until I needed it.  That way if I did get mugged and they got my phone, they would either not be able to turn it on without my secret access code or they would have to torture that out of me before they killed me or rendered me somehow speechless.  I contemplated whether paying for a few minutes in advance was worth all that.  Then I began thinking which option would be better if I thought I was going to get mugged. 

Would it be better to already have my phone on so I could quickly dial 911 (and take the chance of being able to do so before it was too late) or would it be better to wait until I thought I was just about to get mugged and try turning on my phone in time, entering my secret access code, waiting for a signal, and then dialing 911 all before my lights went out.  But what if I cried wolf?  What if I was a little baby scaredy-cat and thought I was going to get mugged just because a couple of hoodlums were walking quickly toward me when all they really wanted was to see if I had a match because theirs got wet?  That would be embarrassing if I had already dialed 911 and had to cancel right in front of them.

You see, this is why guys don’t worry about ridiculous things like getting mugged just by going for a midnight stroll.  We don’t have the brain capacity to handle all the different possible scenarios and if we strain too hard to consider them all, it just gives us a headache.  We would much prefer to walk and enjoy the night and think about pretty girls on the beach or nice Grateful Dead shows we’ve seen or happy thoughts like that.  We’re a simple breed.