Fight or flight?

Fight or flight?

Getting accosted by a drunk with a knife seems more contextually appropriate in a ghetto, but that was just what happened amidst the crowds at Chinatown.

Alison and I were walking on the zebra crossing towards KOI when this drunk came careening towards our general direction, paying no heed to the throngs of pedestrians. She let out a Hokkien expletive and we laughed it off, but the man cycled back and called for her.

"Were you cursing me?" he demanded in Hokkien.
"I think you should watch where you cycle," she retorted.

I pulled her away, only to have him rushing after us. We turned, and there he was staring at us with crazy eyes and a gleaming knife. He started on a tirade about how she had better watch her words or he'd stab her all the way to the hospital, and I felt my heart stop in my chest. All I could think of was that we had to get away from this drunk who's crazy enough to brandish a knife on a brightly lit and extremely crowded pathway.

So I pulled her away towards KOI and prayed he would leave us alone. He did, temporarily. We collected our drinks and continued in the opposite direction only to see him waiting for us there, the same gleaming knife in his hands. He started on the same tirade, even mimicking a stabbing motion a couple of times for good measure.

That was when I stopped taking in what he was saying. All I could hear was my blood pounding in my ears, but somehow my hand found the strength to pull her away from him. He didn't follow us this time, thankfully but I found myself just a tad more wary of skinny bald men on bicycles (there were many).

Having been tailed by gangs while working in Shenzhen, Alison was almost indifferent but I was in shock for a good hour. It seemed incomprehensible that something so daring could happen in Singapore, and in a crowded public place at that. Chinatown is my backyard and I wasn't sure I could ever stroll along the streets alone at night without any fear of that drunk.

It took umpteen replays of the scene in my head before I started rethinking the situation and wondering if I could have acted in a less submissive way. I was scared by him and I'm pretty certain that was the reaction he wanted; so in my mind's several retakes I was staring him down as I casually reached into my purse for pepper spray or a knife.

And I was a kick-ass kung fu fighter.