We tend to avoid reading the local crime reports because we simply don’t want to know, but couldn’t avoid writer and lecturer Douglas Rushkoff’s tale of getting mugged in Park Slope on Christmas Eve. He posted an item on his blog about it:

I got mugged at knifepoint while taking out the garbage Christmas Eve at 9pm.

I negotiated with him for my health insurance card – not only because it has my Social Security number and was really hard to get, but because I knew that such a request would humanize me in the mind of my attacker, and make it harder for him to stab me. Such are the benefits of studying human behavior. All I lost was my phone, cards, and money.

Getting a knife pushed into your ribcage now and again is just part of the price we pay to live in a city, and New York is supposedly one of the safer of the bunch. But I have to admit, it makes me question working two extra gigs (I won’t divulge which ones they are) in order to pay the exorbitant rent this part of Brooklyn – when the streets are less safe than they were in the supposedly bad parts of Manhattan where I used to live.

It may just be the humiliation of not fighting back that’s getting me down, but I fear that Brooklyn may be a crock. And with a two-year-old daughter, I feel a strong urge to spend my effort elsewhere.

Ouch.