677: Seeing Yourself In the Wild
This episode appears to contain dynamically inserted ads. Transcript timestamps may be approximate.
A quick warning, there are curse words that are unbeeped in today's episode of the show. If you prefer a beeped version, you can find that at our website, thisamericanlife.org. From WBEZChicago, it's This American Life. I'm Sean Cole, and for Ira Glass. The first punch landed on sort of the lower back right side of my skull, behind my ear. That was the one that knocked me down. This was a couple summers ago. I'd been walking down this sort of abandoned industrial block in my neighborhood in Brooklyn. It was after midnight. There was a big group of kids, teenagers, boys, maybe nine or ten of them coming the other way. I was on the sidewalk. They were walking in the middle of the street, where the cars go. Also I was on the phone with my friend Sam, talking to him, with my earbuds in. So I just kept walking and talking, glancing over at the kids a couple times. And then I saw them see me, and they sort of stopped and said something to each other. And then a few of them, casually, like I wouldn't notice, started walking in my direction. I don't know if taking off in a sprint was the best decision, or if you could even call it a decision. A couple of the kids said, "Yeah." There were a few things I remember about the next 30 seconds or so, and a few things I don't. I remember looking down at my shoes and thinking, "Why can't I run any faster than this?" Sam said, "What's happening?" I said, "I'm being chased. Who's chasing you?" He said. "They're chasing me," I apparently said, which I don't remember. I don't remember how I got off the ground after the first punch. I just know that a second later, I was running again, and still getting punched in the head. Being punched in the head while running becomes with standable remarkably quickly. After the second hit, my skull was like, "If this is all that's going to happen, you can manage." One kid way in the back, nowhere near me, yelled, "Give me your wallet." But laughing, like it was a joke. They never tried to take anything. They easily could have. I've tried to come up with something to compare the experience of it to, but I've never felt anything else that intensely. I've never felt as good in my life as how bad that was. I rounded the corner and saw a semi-truck coming. It was the only moving vehicle around. I ran toward it with my arms straight up over my head, and when I looked back, the kids had vanished. Gone, just like they'd never been there in the first place. I slowed to a walk, which is when I noticed my earbuds were neatly spooled around my left angle. Like I'd done it on purpose. One of them was smashed, and when I lifted the other one up toward my face... "Shawn, are you okay?
Transcription truncated.