It's just a bunch of stuff that happened.

Marge: Homer, it's the thought that counts. The moral of this story is a good deed is its own reward.
Bart: Hey, we got a reward. The head is cool.
Marge: Well then... I guess the moral is no good deed goes unrewarded.
Homer: Wait a minute. If I hadn't written that nasty letter, we wouldn't've gotten anything.
Marge: Well... then I guess the moral is the squeaky wheel gets the grease.
Lisa: Perhaps there is no moral to this story.
Homer: Exactly! It's just a bunch of stuff that happened.
Marge: But it certainly was a memorable few days.
Homer: Amen to that!

I think that perhaps I should have made the title of this post the title of my blog, instead of "slipperily".

A few weeks ago, Julia and I were walking to dinner (yes, we're back together and things are much better and either she's less crazy or I'm more crazy, I'm not sure which). It was pretty early in the evening, around 10 PM, and the restaurant wasn't very far away from my apartment.

I have a habit that I always try to walk a different route than I have before. This particular night, I lead us along a route that was parallel to some railroad tracks. The street was busy--- lots of cars--- but no pedestrians on the sidewalk.

As Julia and I were walking, three teenagers passed us going the other direction. One of them asked me for money, and I responded that I had none. As we passed, one of them put something in the middle of my back and told me to give him my money. I swung around with my fist closed and caught him on the shoulder with the back of my hand as he stumbled backwards. At the same time, one of the teens grabbed at Julia's purse and necklace. I stepped close to help Julia, but she had already fought herself free and they ran away.

The whole thing was over in about 5 seconds.

The chain on Julia's necklace was broken, and we believed that they had made off with the pendant, but after 5 minutes of searching the cracked sidewalk, I was able to find it. The only reason I decided to search the sidewalk is that the kid that grabbed at Julia did a slight hesitation after she pushed him away, like he saw that the pendant fell on the ground and thought about going for it, before seeing that I was at her side.

Avenida Juan B. Justo, as I found out, is not a place to walk at night. My Spanish teacher later told me that she is nervous walking that street during the daytime, and that it's suicidal to walk there at night.

I have NEVER been attacked before, and I've walked in some bad areas (of the US and Buenos Aires). Buenos Aires is a safe city-- it's just that there are a couple of areas which are not good, and I happened to unknowingly decide to explore one of them, while dressed nicely with my girl. Not very smart of me.

Plus, I also blame the fact that I cut my hair last month. In my opinion, long hair is like having a "Club" on your car's steering wheel. I feel like Sampson must have felt.

So I guess that there is a moral-- Don't walk Avenida Juan B Justo at night. But really, it's just a bunch of stuff that happened, and in the end it was so trivial that I didn't think to write about it until now. The only reason why I did remember to mention it is because I promised Julia that I would buy her a new chain for her necklace, and I finally got around to shopping for one today.