Real Encounters

*Was it worth it?*

This happened about a year ago, so I was 17 then. I worked at the mall which wasn't far from my house, but it was still a 20 minute bus ride away and I often had to stay until 10:30pm.

It was a Saturday night and I had just gotten on the bus, thankful to be on my way home. It had been a long day. I live in a relatively safe part of LA so I usually had no qualms on the bus, aside from it being filled by the homeless. I'm a native so I don't even notice at this point, I found an empty seat on the second to last row.

Headphones in, I usually just zone out at this point, but there's this Creepy Dude that moved seats when I sat down just to position himself in the empty row behind me. Alright, Creepy Dude. I've dealt with his kind before and at this point of my night I am too tired to care. Stare at the back of my head, whatever, just leave me alone.

And then I feel a hand on my shoulder.

"Yo, excuse me, can you not do that? Thanks." I say, loud enough that it should alert someone near by. Newsflash: I live in LA. People don't care about people here, and I am ignored.

Creepy Dude is not deterred. He keeps his hand on my shoulder and leans in, sniffing at my hair. Hold up. Sniffing? Damn, dude, step off.

"It's okay, sweetie," he murmurs, and I swear to god every hair on my body stood on end when he said that. "Don't worry. It's okay. Shhh." He starts rubbing my shoulder with his hand and I tense up. This is not okay.

So sure. I could have moved seats. I could have ignored him because my stop was coming up and I have pepper spray in my bag if he tried following me. I could have told someone else to intervene. But fueled with anger from dealing with incompetent customers all day and now being thrown in this situation was not good for my mental health -- I needed to destress.

I grabbed his middle finger from my shoulder and pulled it back as far as I could, not letting go until I heard a satisfying crunch. I guess Creepy Dude didn't appreciate that because he leapt out of his seat clutching his newly deformed finger, yelling profanities at me, and ran out of the bus -- just his luck that we were at a stop, too.

So, Creepy Dude That Couldn't Keep His Hands To Himself, let's not meet. Or maybe we should. After all, you still have 9 fingers left.