Safety?

I’m sure you’ve heard people say that they were never concerned about “whatever” until it touched their life in some way.  Our family had a first-hand reminder of that last night — my mum was mugged last night on her way home from work.  I’m sure she would have liked a less violent way to get her 15 minutes of fame (courtesy Channel Nine’s evening news in Brisbane, in this case).

She got rolled by a couple of kids on her way from the railway station to home (she could probably have seen her front door from the spot).  While they didn’t actually attack her so much (rather they grabbed her bag, knocking her for six in the process), she did come out of it a bit banged up and certainly shaken by the experience.

Those unfamiliar with the surroundings would jump to the conclusion that she should have stuck to the better-lit pathways rather than the short-cut she’s taken in safety for the last 10 years or more.  Halali-like, they’d say “she was asking for trouble”.  Not likely.  Like any kind of attack, who knows how many times in the past the perpetrators were ready to strike and were warned or scared off by something at the last minute.  More likely, this was something random, a wrong-place-at-the-wrong-time kind of thing.  Besides, in this case “better-lit” is no more than a dodgy streetlamp at 100-metre intervals.

While it doesn’t help the situation, I’m bloody angry about it.  I’m angry about a company that thinks it’s okay for a female staff-member in her sixties to make her own way home at midnight.  I’m angry at an establishment that sends its police and army overseas to fight in multiple theatres in a fictitious “war on terror” when there is very real terror in our own suburbs.  And, despite what I wrote earlier, I’m angry that she walked in the dark…

Most of all, I’m angry at a son who doesn’t do anything about his mother walking in the dark.  Could I have done anything?  No, but still…

Here’s hoping the little bastards get everything they deserve — and I’m not talking about our piss-weak civil-libertarian-kowtowing give-them-every-chance-under-the-sun-to-rehabilitate-while-they-reoffend-at-taxpayers-expense judicial system…  No, I’m talking about karma.  Good luck in the afterlife guys.