Coming back to the building from the grocery store, a man walking the other way was loudly mumbling some nonsense. He appeared to be drunk and stumbling around in that way drunk people do, but for some reason it seemed like fake drunken stumbling to me. He had his right hand stuck inside his jacket, and he had a plastic grocery bag in his left hand.

As we neared each other he shouted something (which sounded like gibberish) then stumbled suddenly toward me. I jumped away and we made eye contact, I unintentionally swung my bag of groceries toward him, partly thinking he might just be drunk, but then for the first time thinking that he was surely faking it and was trying to corner me.

I guess you can't do this dance without another person. If he was really going to try something, then maybe he chose not to because there were so many other people around.

Which is not to say I think that any of of my neighbors would have done a thing in my defense.