“I remember when…” Ah, what an interesting statement. There are so many comedies and tragedies I can fill in this blank because, in my short seventeen years, I have got myself into so many unusual situations. Most of these situations, however, I probably shouldn’t share to the public on account of some of them aren’t exactly legal. It’s not what actually happens in the situation that is important. It’s how you tell the story that makes it worth telling and my favorite story is the time I found myself looking straight down the sharp end of a knife that was large and sharp enough to cut right through me without even a struggle. The man on the other side of this knife was not a buddy or a friend trying to get a jump out of me. It was a stranger threatening to cut me in half, but let me explain. Although at the time I was legitimately afraid for my life, I made it home safely and am alive to talk about it today.

It was the first Friday in November. School had just been let out and our group had assembled, trying to decide the carpool situation for our Friday-Night-Out trip downtown to see the local art fare that took place the first Friday of every month. We have some musician friends that would be street performing during this event and we wanted to go down and support them. The weather was considerably warmer than it should have been considering it was November. The night was starting to look like it was going to be a success.

After struggling to find a place to park in the crowded downtown area, we wonder around listening for the familiar sounds of our musician friends covering Dirty Head and Vampire Weekend songs. We find our friends with their guitar case open with one pathetic dollar crinkled up all by its self. Looks like a tough night in the local teenage music industry. But with the fusion jazz band blasting on their full drum set and horn section, playing right next door, I’m surprised anyone was able to hear our friends play at all. With a professional jazz band on the left, a professional country band on the right, and our friends stuck right in between, their crowd never grew much larger than the five or six of us in our group, but it was still fun to watch them play.

Looking across the street from where we were standing there was a three-story building that looked to be an art museum. On the top floor, looking out the window, there was a group of three middle-aged men being goofy and making faces at us, so we made some right back. One of the men in the group stepped it up a notch by rubbing is bare beer belly on the glass, which made the ladies in our group shiver with disgust. I, being quite fond of the center of attention, was not going to let the innocence of these young girls be tainted by some stranger. If anyone was going to steal the innocence of my friends, it was going to be me. So, after a quick stretch, I placed both hands shoulder length apart on the ground and kicked my legs up against the wall behind me and started to wall-twerk. If you are unfamiliar with the incredibly stupid dance move known only as twerking, then you need to crawl out from under whatever rock you have been living in since before Miley Cyrus came to earth from what ever planet she is from and let me applaud you. You have accomplished what I have been trying to do my whole life, avoid pop-culture. Wall-twerking is the act of doing a handstand against a wall while you shake your hips in the most unattractive way imaginable. This dance is typically reserved for pre-teen girls who think boys will like them when they dance like a talentless pop star but I decided to channel my inner pre-teen to fight for the honor of my friends.

After seeing me perform this exotic style of dancing, the three men decided that that was too funny to top and left the widow they were looking at us through. So we redirected our attention back towards our starving musician friends. All was going well after that. The music sounded great and it was nice being with the company of my friends. I was facing down the street, talking to a member in our group when the look on her face changed from a big smile to a look of fear and confusion. Before I am able to turn around to see what she is looking at I am hit by something. I don’t know what. It seemed to grab me and push me around all while yelling in my ear. Confused, I turn around to try and grasp what had just happened. It was the man we had seen before. I recognized the beer belly pushing up against his shirt. Behind him were his two droogs. The man standing to his left looked like the brains. He was wearing a black baseball cap backwards and looked like a smaller version of the ringleader (perhaps they were brothers). The third man seemed to look out of place. His clothes were far too baggy for his skimpy figure and covered it all with a black leather jacket, one that you wear while on a motorcycle. His thin, stringy, beard hung just below his chin, hardly covering up the tattoos on his neck. He had stretched his ears with gages to about twice the size of a quarter, but for whatever reason took out the plugs, so now he was left with disgusting holes in his ear that gaped open with no shape to them whatsoever. This was the kind of man you wouldn’t want to be left alone with in a dark alley.

What was I supposed to say to these men? I never thought I would see them again, but there they were, standing in front of me looking for a conversation. So I just said the first thing that came to my mind “ For a second I thought you were going to stab me!” The two men that reminded me of tweedle dee and tweedle dum started to laugh while the Mr. Straight-Outta-Compton said with a straight face: “You mean like this?” He whipped out his knife and held it right in front of my nose. At that moment ever ounce of manhood I had ever had flew away as I let out a scream that sounded very similar to one of Miley Cyrus’s high notes. Time froze in that instant and I remember thinking “I may actually get stabbed. This is not good.” He stood there holding his knife right in front of me and I contemplated taking off running. His eyes were cold. The other two men had looks on their faces that said, “He’s at it again.”

Finally time started to move again and all three middle-aged men started to laugh while he put his knife away. A sigh of relief simultaneously left everyone in our groups mouths (except for the musicians, who never once stopped playing. Later, when asked if they saw any of that they said, “Ya, it sounded like a little girl screaming.”) After any threat of a brutal stabbing was gone the two groups started to converse with each other. Mr. Beer-Belly was very intrigued by my slick dance moves and asked me to teach him. So me and the man, side-by-side wall-twerked like we’ve never wall-twerked before.