It’s not even a great story really . . . But I witnessed a shooting last night.
I was eating pizza around the corner from the hospital, enjoying my dinner break from work. I heard two gun shots, ran outside [what???] to see what was going on [as opposed to hiding under a table which would have been the reasonable thing to do] and saw four guys running down the street about 15 ft. away. There were some cops standing next to me, eating muffins [not kidding] from the Columbian cafe next door, so it seemed OK that I stay on my cell phone, giving my lovely partner a second-by-second play-by-play of the action instead of calling 911. About 8 minutes later, after the 4 guys had gotten far away I’m sure, about 12 NYPD cars wailed onto the scene. Meanwhile, I figured out about 10 minutes after the whole thing was over that I had just witnessed a scary thing and should not be calling everyone I know on my cell phone boasting, “I just saw a shooting outside my work!”
Do I see more terrible things than your average New Yorker? I have lived here 1.5 years and I have seen a shooting and a stabbing so far. One right outside where I work (the shooting) and one where I go to school in Manhattan. Considering I saw NO acts of violence while growing up in suburbia, seeing 2 in less then 2 years seems like a lot to me.
