Mug story
This all happened around the year 2000. I know that I was dating the woman whom I would marry, Jen, and where I was living in my college dorm, so the time frame is narrowed down from October 1999-June 2001.
My memory seems to be really geographically based. I’ll remember something that happened in elementary school, and think, “well that must’ve been either 2nd, 4th, or 6th grade as my classroom was on the right side of the hallway.” I think other people have bigger distinctions that help them to determine whether something happened when they were 7 years old or 11 years old, but so it goes.
Anyways, back to sometime around the year 2000. That’s back when I spent a lot of disposable income on coats, you know, like all kids of that age. Living in Chicago, it’s not a terrible thing to spend money on. The weather can change 50 degrees one day to the next, so it really necessitates a variety of coats, hoodies, jackets and fleeces. I had a coat named Frank that I wore most of the time. It was a nice fall/early winter weight and had an inner pocket for my wallet. Solid, respectable coat. The coat was, of course, named after Frank Black, the Lance Henriksen character from the show Millennium as it was very similar to the one he wore on the somewhat short-lived X-files adjacent series.
Anyways, one fall-ish day, I’ve decided that it was fall now, thus eliminating 2001 dates right out of the equation. One fall day, our friend Elizabeth ropes Jen into walking to the gas station to buy her some cigarettes. Elizabeth managed to rope Jen into doing this thing despite only offering her a single dollar bill, which even in October of 1999 through the end of the year 2000 was not nearly enough money to buy cigarettes. Jen, however, had a debit card that would work as a credit card, something that seemed like witchcraft at the time, and she offered to spot the money for the pack. They were roommates, I dunno.
I, being Jen’s boyfriend, decided to accompany her. It was many years before they invented Netflix and Chill, and I had about three dollars left to spend for that month, so walking to the gas station together was about as good a date as I could afford.
In addition to those noble reasons, this gas station we were walking to was affectionately called the Amoco of Death. It was the classy sort of gas station where a guy might be selling bootleg movies out of the trunk of his car. And not just any movies, but bootleg pornography. Eventually it was rebranded as a BP of Doom, and currently, I believe the space is an empty lot for the Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts.
So, we went back to our rooms to grab our coats and journey off to the Amoco of Death. The weather had changed somewhat, as it does in Chicago, which as you may remember necessitates a variety of coats, hoodies, jackets and fleeces. So I switched from Frank the coat to Tim. Tim was my black trench coat. He is, of course, named after Detective Tim Bayless from Homicide: Life on the Street, as it looked like something Kyle Secor would wear whilst investigating the murders of Baltimore. Tim had a pair of leather gloves in the pocket, so it was probably November 1999 or November 2000.
So, we journeyed off to the Amoco of death! It was the witching hour. . . about 6:15pm. We’re early dinner people, like most adventurers. We walked from our dorms, Burton-Judson. Now, Burton Judson is a dorm that looks like a castle, which is a fact that I guess distracted them while making the decision to name a place full of 20 year old kids, BJ. They have since expanded it, and rebranded the new larger facility Campus South. So instead of BJ, the 20 years old go South.
But that’s neither here nor there. It’s an adventure and we were starting from a castle, as all adventurers due, at around 6:15, which all adventurers do. We walk past the SSA, which is where they teach social work, which is probably not the most profitable field to study the University of Chicago. Then we passed Midway Studios, which is where people are taught art, which is probably not the most profitable field to study at the University of Chicago.
Finally, we made it to the Amoco of Death. Jen used her witchcraft card to purchase a soft pack of Camels from a man standing behind 3 inches of bulletproof glass, while I diligently took in the sales pitch of another man selling patchouli and tube socks out of the back of his Toyota Tercel.
As one does.
Our adventure successful, we started the Journey home. Ending as all journeys do, past a sea of artists and social workers in training. But as we were passing by Midway studios, I noticed these three guys walking towards us in a fairly aggressive manner. I say guys, but they were probably each, at most, 17 years old. I scooted over to the fence to make room on the sidewalk. Scooting is an important and often underrated adventuring skill.
But, they didn’t pass. The three guys surrounded me and are held me against the fence without touching me, mind you, but by means of personal space invasion. Personal Space invaders was the less popular sequel to the 1978 arcade classic.
Anyways, Jen, got boxed out and was standing outside all this. She’s 5 feet tall and can’t see what’s happening on the other side of this curtain of 17 year olds.
I thought it was just some aggressive pan handling, and was under-reacting to the whole situation. That’s when the tallest kid says to me, and I quote, “Excuse me, this a mugging. Please, give us all your money.”
Then, one of the kids took his finger, stuck it into his own coat pocket, pointed it from inside his own coat pocket, and said, “I have a gun.”
I replied, conspicuously free of terror, "Dude, I've got like 3 bucks. You can have it if you want."
Now, this bothered the tall kid, who said, "No, thirty dollars isn't enough. Gimme all
your money."
Though I was tempted to correct, “No, no I said 3,” I figured that that wouldn’t help. It was a lesson in the proper time for fact-checking which would come in handy (yet unstudied) in my subsequent years of marriage.
No, instead I reached into my coat pocket and found. . . Nothing.
Nothing, but a pair of leather gloves. I checked all of my pockets. Nothing. Nothing but a pair of leather gloves.
I had left my wallet at home in Frank, and didn’t load up Tim with anything.
How embarrassing.
So, I said, "Sorry guys, I left my wallet in my other coat."
The guys (to whom I had just apologized for lacking steal-able items) all froze for a second, before one of them finally said, “What?”
So I said, "My wallet is in my other coat. I have a decent pair of gloves. I've got extra; you can have this pair." I did have another pair of leather gloves in Frank’s pockets, so I figured Tim and he could share for the immediate future.
Now for some reason, these kids thought I was a liar, and it kinda hurt my feelings. So, one of them started to search my coat pockets. He didn’t find anything but the gloves either.
That guy said, "He doesn't have any money."
They had trouble believing him, too. So, I guess these guys were just kinda skeptical by their very nature.
So, I tried to help them believe their friend. Well, that’s presumptive. I tried to help them believe their workplace associate. "Nope. Sorry guys. I got no money."
Meanwhile, Jen was watching all this from behind the curtain of 17-year-old street toughs and she seemed a little perturbed by the situation. So, she dug into her pocket and pulled out all the money she had on her. This amounted exclusively to Elizabeth's single dollar bill.
Jen kinda waved the dollar bill in the air like she was calling a knight over with a hankie or like she were a commodities broker in an 80s movie. She announced to them, "I have a dollar."
The kid, I guess speaking for all three of them, responded, "Oh no. We don't take money from women."
Then they turned and walked away.
We stood there for a minute and exchanged some glances as one does in such a situation, then continued our journey home. When we made it back to the corner of BJ, the dorm not the lewd sexual act, an unmarked police car came to a screeching stop right in front of us. The cop rolled down his passenger side window, leaned over and asked, “What those guys say to you?”
I don’t remember which of us answered, “They said, excuse me this is a mugging.”
The cop replied, “Great!” which I found a bit odd, before asking us, “Did they say they had a gun.”
“Well, yeah, but they didn’t.”
The cop peeled out. We stood there dumbfounded for maybe 20 seconds, before we saw the whole panoply of law enforcement. We saw UCPD police cars, CPD police cars, UCPD police Ford Explorers, CPD police Ford Explorers all tearing down the road, sirens screaming and lights flashing, followed with perfect comedic timing by a lone cop on a bicycle pedaling his heart out.
They caught the guys right away, but not before they had actually successfully mugged somebody. They managed to take a pen, a flip phone, $36, and a receipt from Pockets, the local calzone place.
I think the key to their success was that, for the second attempt, they switched their opening line to: “Excuse me, this is a stick up.”
Which we can all agree, is way more effective.