Let loose the dogs of war…

I swear to God, the woman was barking.

I desperately wanted to look directly at her to confirm with my eyes what my ears told me was going on; instead I averted my glance out the salt encrusted window. I would love to claim that my superior manners prevented me from staring. However, I know the truth. With apologies to my mother, I confess that this was not a case of a proper upbringing. Rather, my urban survival instinct had kicked in.

Not that I wasn’t dying to know what had caused this woman to bark at herself, in fact, I was consumed by the idea. Instead I reasoned that, much like a display of flourescent colors on a tropical amphibian, barking at one’s self is Mother Nature’s way of informing the rest of the animal kingdom to back the hell off.

The irony, of course, is that in nature, prey animals stare directly at the threat. The herd of gazelles munching on grasses in the African savannah intently stare at predators to signal alertness; an alert gazelle is a difficult gazelle to catch. Eye contact is essential in this singalling game. Not so in the confines of a public bus…

On my first trip to NYC, I landed at La Guardia and was instructed to take the bus into Harlem in order to meet my brother at 125th Street. I boarded the bus with a few other people at the airport, one of whom was a small, kind looking woman. A few stops later, a small, unkind looking man got on the bus. He exuded unkindness in a way that most of us correctly interpreted which in turn caused us to stare intently out the windows or cast our glances upon the floor of the bus. The kind looking woman was caught unprepared and the predator pounced. He sat right behind her and began to engage in conversation.

Intelligent humans will do as gazelles do when a predator strikes; stay the hell away from the feeding predator. This behavior manifests itself in humans by absolutely avoiding eye contact with the predator/prey. My urban skills had not been honed yet, and I failed this test. My curiousity overruled my sense of self-preservation, and I looked at the poor woman.

I meant a quick look to convey my sympathy for her plight, a glance of solidarity if you will. Instead, I found her to be a stone cold monolith exhibiting a different behavior common to prey animals. Having understood the enormity of her original mistake, she employed the active-passive defense.

The Oppossum will employ the active-passive defense. When threatened by a predator, the oppossum will play dead. Humans employ this same behavior by projecting an aura of extreme indifference. The unkind looking man speaks, yet she does not respond. He asks questions, yet she does not answer. Overwhelmed by her total dismissal, the predator begins to look around for easier prey. This was when I offered the woman my look of solidarity, a disasterous misplay on my part.

The predator, instead of my fellow prey animal, received the supportive message. Much to her relief, this prompted the man to exchange his seat near her to one directly behind me. I want to say I caught a smirk on the kind woman’s face, but I think that is just a rearward projection of ill-will on my part.

I will call the unkind looking man Paul Revere because much like his namesake, the man felt his obligation was informing others of pending war. In my case, fair skinned tormentor delighted in informing me of the coming race war. This alarmed me for two reasons.

First, I have always been a Rodney-King-can’t-we-all-just-get-along type. While I would like to say this is from a liberal-philosophical tradition, I think this stems more from a realization that by definition being a minority denotes there are more of "them" than there are of "us."

The more alarming reason, though, was that I was not from the same race as my eugenically inclined herald. Though my pigment challenged prophet friend confessed that by being a convicted felon he could not "legally" possess firearms, this failed to calm my nerves. Blissfully, the predation stopped when he recognized his busstop approach. Much like a lionness forced to surrender a juicy wildebeast for others to scavenge, my tormentor bade me farewell with a wistful look upon his face.

Chastened by my encounter with the race warrior felon on the NYC bus, I kept my eyes to myself when the barking lady sat in the seat a row behind me and across the aisle. I worried that perhaps my tormentor of old had loosed the dogs of war and she was it.