Several months of incessant paranoia-mongering by my parents and other Concerned Friends and Neighbours has not exactly made my walk and tram ride home every Tuesday night a pleasurable experience. Add to this classic examples of prescribed university reading like this from a chap called Buchloh,
“…both caricature and mask conceive of a person’s physiognomy as fixed rather than a fluid field; in singling out particular traits, they reduce the infinity of differential facial expressions to a metonymic set. Thus, the fixity of the mask and caricature deny outright the promise of fullness and traditional aspirations toward an organic mediation of the essential characteristics of the differentiated bourgeois subject…”
and you are hardly in a state of mind to be worrying about whether or not that guy with the cello case who’s been tailing you for the last few streets has the intention or even the ability to corner you in a dark and bin juice-soaked alleyway. Ergo, I have produced my Fail Safe Anti-Mug Guide for the homebound and probably hungry university student:
Step 1: Preparation
Now, I know shoulder bags and totes sporting retro designs most people have forgotten the significance of is extremely fashionable practice at the moment, but this makes you easy prey for the Potential Mugger: he/she/it must simply yank the bag from its precarious position on your shoulder to have succeeded in the nefarious act. The good old fashioned backpack, however, requires twice as much effort to steal, being firmly secured over two shoulders (and with the added virtue of not causing nearly as much neck strain). Sure, Potential Mugger (hereby abbreviated to PM, which does not stand for the head of our executive (after the Queen of England and the Governor General, of course) or pre-menstrual anything, by the way) could simply extricate the contents of your backpack with a few swipes of its nasty claws, but that’s what jumbo padlocks are for.
Step 2: Going home
Watch the traffic. You may think you’re being followed by that possessed-looking woman in the parachute pants, but that’s no excuse to keep your eyes off the Urban Assault Vehicles and elderly volvos clogging up the streets. This is also not a time to be listening to Ramstein on your iPod or equivalent portable music player. If you can simply not get your walking mojo without some kind of music, then keep one ear earbud-free, just like you do in class, when talking to friends, during sleep etc. This will aid your aural detection of impending muggings (classic signs include suspiciously well-timed footsteps falling behind yours, screams, the singing of AFL team songs and womanly shrieks of “Stop! Thief!”).
You should also try to keep to brightly-lit and well populated streets, though this precludes large drunken gangs of baby boomers in denial and poor students, in addition to the entrances of nightclubs (look out for obscene/strobe lighting and dodgy music). If your journey home happens to involve some mode of public transport, general overpacking of carriages thanks to the apathy of Connex and Yarra Trams makes it unlikely you will be ostentatiously mugged if indeed you manage to board your ride home (assuming it arrives) and not suffocate from lack of ventilation. You have now, sadly, entered the domain of pickpockets (for the best advice in this situation, see Aviva’s Guide To Not Being Robbed Blind On Public Transport, And I Don’t Mean From The Myki Stuff Up).
Step 3: Arm Yourself
This step should have probably come earlier, but cbf going back and editing now. Anyway, if you feel the necessity, find some seemingly innocent and relatively sharp object in you backpack (e.g. house keys, common pencil case scissors) and have them at the ready should a PM jump out at you. Popular positions for your weapon include in between your index and middle finger (Wolverine-style) or concealed in a hat/scarf/secret compartment of your thongs (and I’m talking about footwear here, people). But arming yourself should only be a precautionary measure. I am not instructing you to maul people you don’t like, however their smarmy faces may tempt you. You will be surprised how well a perpetual scowl and arrogant stride will protect you from PMs and their secret insecurities.
Step 4: Arriving Home
Time to gloat along the lines of “I told you I wouldn’t be mugged on the way home from uni in the dead of night”. To which they may reply, “I would hardly call 8 o’clock the dead of night, V”, to which I (I mean ‘you’) should reply, “What’s for dinner?”.
