on the well-lit Ninth Street, there was a stupid abandoned row house two doors down from my newly renovated basement, in front of which a bunch of annoying hooligans held a nightly game of concrete craps. Because walking through this foolishness meant no fewer than five hoots and three hollers, I’d decided months before that walking up the dimly lit and suburbanly silent T Street was the wiser choice.

Just a block away from home, I spotted two teenage boys walking at me. I got brief glimpses of them from under my umbrella. Oh, yeah, it’d started raining. They seemed harmless, although curiously alert given the hour. It was a little past midnight, and the tall one was rapping loudly down the pavement part of the street, while his partner provided the beats from the sidewalk. Too tired to switch sides, I made a note of them and kept it moving.

By the time we met in the middle of the block, our paths crossed without incident. They went their way and I continued on mine, already fingering the front door key in my coat pocket.

You know that feeling you get when someone is staring at you from behind? Evidence that there exists some type of spiritual kinetic energy between all human beings that we’re just too primitive to tap into and use to stir coffee with our minds? About two seconds after avoiding whatever situation happens after dark between two men and a woman on a silent street, that feeling hit me like a fist to the face. Thankfully, they didn’t use anything that dramatic.

“What the fuck?” They were on me in an instant, the tall one tugging on my purse before I had a chance to process the idea of being robbed. It was ridiculous. Who makes a decent living wage pickpocketing besides nineteenth-century British foundlings? Clearly this was not a mugging but this kid’s scary attempt at flirting. Sorry, homie, but I’m grown. Move along, please, I’ve got z’stocatch.

“Gimme the bag,” he said, the growing size of his eyes conveying his seriousness. His rapping partner closed in on the left side, and I was boxed out with basketball-camp-for-inner-city-youth efficiency. This is also around the time I first contemplated screaming “FIRE!” which, according to the self-defense class Frances made me take as a twelve-year-old, is what you yell when someone’s either trying to rape or murder you. Nobody wants to muddy up his or her house shoes running after a serial killer. But anybody will vault from naked Twister to watch a neighbor’s nest egg go up in flames.

“No!” Now see, this objection flew from my lips totally without my knowledge. In fact none of my subsequent actions were preapproved—yanking my purse strap back onto my shoulder, parking my free hand onto my hip, and assuming what can only be described as a ninja stance. Despite being well aware of the fact that my life was worth more than an XOXO bag circa 1999, I literally couldn’t help myself.

“Give. Me. The. Bag.” I finally let go with all the petulance of a preschooler just learning to share. Fine then! Here. The shorter one, feeling neglected, kept himself busy with my pockets, patting them down and asking three times for “the cash.” “Where’s the cash? Is there cash?”

“There’s no money in that bag, sir. Sir? Sir, there’s nothing to be had in my pockets,” I said, pleading in the most professional manner I could think of. Maybe I could appeal to their more genteel sides, or at least throw them off with my olde English and run in the other direction while they looked over their shoulders for whoever had on the top hat.

Then it was over. With my “leather” purse in hand and a fist full of lint, these two sixteen-year-old scalawags took off in the opposite direction like they stole something. With that simile forever ruined, I felt more disappointed than debased. That was it? Without a phone with which to call the authorities or my mother, I decided walking another block and a half to the metro wouldn’t be tempting fate. Plus, it’s not like I had anything left to lose. On the ride down the escalator, I kept looking around to see if people were staring—if I looked like someone who’d just been robbed by children.

I burst into tears only after asking the two officials behind the bulletproof glass if I could please use their official MTA telephone to call the police. One of the station agents,