You Picked The Wrong Fat Guy.

When Olivia Newton-John passed away and I was revisiting her oeuvre, I listened to “A Little More Love”, a minor hit from her 1978 Totally Hot LP. At 9 years old, I didn’t realize how dark the song was. There is a line “Where did my innocence go?” which my sisters and I always sang as “Where did my Anacins go?” We thought she had a headache and couldn’t find her aspirin.

I thought of this song again this morning as Toby was laying out some Advil for me to take. And then I had to Google “Anacin” to see if they still make it. They do. But nobody asks for it by name anymore.

The Advil is for a broken bone in my foot. It’s the hallux sesamoid, a stupid little bone in the ball of the foot that some people don’t even have. Apparently the tiny chip that showed up on the X-ray could have been there for years, but the fact that my foot is swollen and purple indicates a recent trauma.

On Saturday we attended a wedding on the Upper West Side – a very nice affair even though they did not play any Olivia Newton-John. The subway system was not cooperating with us on the way to the event. The A train was on the C track and running local but only to 59^th street, where it went express on the D line headed into the Bronx. The trains were clogged with puzzled slow-moving tourists. Typical of weekend mass transit. You really can’t blame visitors for being confused. The Google map prediction that our subway ride would take 8 minutes was off by about half an hour and the wedding ceremony was in progress when we arrived. Four hours later, apprehensive of further subway drama, we boarded the downtown C train headed back to Penn Station.

At Times Square / 42^nd Street, the doors were just about to close when a guy snatched my iPhone out of my hand and ran out of the train. I was looking at my phone as he did this. I don’t remember saying “What the fuck?” but that was what Toby heard me say as I bolted out the door after the thief.

I wasn’t even sure if Toby got off the train before the door closed – I was focused on getting my damn phone back. On the platform, the guy slowed for a second before he realized that I was right behind him. He sprinted for the stairs but I kept up with him. As he darted up the steps, I thought “Here we go…”

I have never tackled anyone in my life. Well, outside of the bedroom, anyway. I had no idea that I had a football tackle in my arsenal. But I dove at this guy, who was not a very big man. In the cartoon version of this, my suit-clad 220 pound frame completely flattened him on the stairs. With only his withering hand sticking out from under my girth, he let go of my phone and it clattered onto the steps.

I remember saying “Betcha didn’t think I could run, did ya? Asshole.” I grabbed the phone off the stairs – it couldn’t have been more than 20 seconds since he took it out of my hand on the train. And now Toby was on the guy too, pulling him by the legs and just about to land a punch when an undercover police officer grabbed his arm. Suddenly we were surrounded by police. We soon learned that they had just finished issuing a summons nearby when this unfolded.

Our little felon was taken away and Toby and I got to spend the next 2 ½ hours in the transit police station filling out forms and repeating our story over and over. EMT checked out my bruised hand and swollen foot. We collectively determined that rather than sitting in an Emergency Room for hours on a Saturday night with non-emergency injuries, I should go home, apply some ice, and see how I felt in the morning.

The next day, Toby and I had a couple of additional bruises and minor soreness… except for the foot, which still fucking hurt. I went to the hospital where my superhero sister works as an ER nurse and X-rays confirmed that there was a broken bone.

Although I have lived in this city for over 30 years and I have never actually been robbed, there are plenty of comparable actions that one can easily get tired of putting up with. The unfairness, inconveniences, and the feeling that you are being ripped off can be dismissed as things to deal with in exchange for being allowed to live in The City So Nice, They Named It Twice. If you don’t like it, you know what you can do: Leave. Period. Nobody cares. The End. Another hundred people just got offa the train.

But on this day, a fine Saturday afternoon, instead of feeling beaten up by the city, I felt pretty good. I landed on top, literally.

I would feel very differently if I didn’t get the phone back.

I have to add this:

New York City is not the crime-ridden hellscape that Republican politicians want you to think it is. Crime is still lower here than at any point during “the good ol’ days” of the 70’s, 80’s or 90’s. And the people whipping everyone into a frenzy about rampant crime also tend to be against any kind of gun control. Don’t even try to figure that one out. Media saturation does not improve the optic. There is surveillance footage of everything now – not to mention phone footage. So the nightly news can report on every crime with a clips of it actually taking place.

There might be footage of the tackle but I’m sure that my cartoon visualization is much more satisfying.

You can also read about my friend Kenneth’s incredulous iPhone snatching incident from the summer of 2021 here.