Originally posted by Masherbrum
I'm sorry. I'm 34, and if "your gut tells you something is askew", you should listen to it. I took 20+ punches to the face my senior year of HS in 1991. When I came to, he had two split lips, cuts on both cheeks and a left eye shiner. I had a couple of light bruises on my right cheek. Yer preaching to the choir on this Serenity. The kid was taunting and swearing at an Arabic kid that barely spoke English (he was actually a nice kid and was in 3 of my classes) and did not understand what the dolt was saying. This went on for a couple of weeks and I had enough.
If I'm walking alone at the age of 34 and someone stranger just happens to want a "handshake". Um, red flags are going up. You got sucker punched, bone or not.
Ouch, 20+ to the face? Okay, that WILL hurt, lol.
Yeah, red flags were up, but as I said, I was raised differently. For the most part, the people out here are REALLY friendly. Its nothing like the mainland. Just about everyone out here is related somehow, and if someone comes up and starts a friendly conversation, and shakes your hand saying "Have a good night", you return the handshake. Up until the sucker-punch (Yeah, I know I got sucker punched) they were real polite, so I saw no reason to be the impolite one and refuse it. Now, I still had the red flags in my head, but until they justified it, I thought I might as well. I was wrong, and it was stupid to shake his hand, but at the time it seemed perfectly logical.