I am someone who likes to do things with my hands.
I am almost constantly fidgety, and I have to do something with my hands or else my mind goes a bit crazy it seems. When I’m at work during some dead time at the desk, I have a pen that I use for pen spinning. When I’m out waiting for a bus or train, I am probably yoyoing. When I’m sitting down watching tv after a long day of work, there’s usually a contact juggling ball in my hands rolling about as I watch tv half focused on what’s on, and half focused on learning some new move. It’s just the way I am I suppose.
I had a very VERY unexpected turn of events happen to me over the weekend and it all came about as a result of my fidgety hands.
I found myself down by the fishermans wharf area of San Francisco. Normally, I absolutely hate this area as its basically one giant slab of an overpriced tourist trap. But I had been invited to a nearby restaurant by some friends, and I couldn’t refuse some decent, although overpriced food, so I opted to go. The dinner was perfect and we had a great time, and following the dinner, we decided to take a bit of a walk through the area just to take in the sites, and maybe try to convince some tourist not to buy that 45 dollar “authentic SF” cable car figure.
We walked through the pier area and one of the group went to the restroom so we were waiting outside just hanging out and talking. Like my usual self, I took the opportunity to take out my old Cyclon FHZ and throw a bit.
Things got very weird.
A man walked up to me suddenly and grabbed the yoyo, stopping it. I jumped because this guy pretty much came out of nowhere. Immediately he started yelling. “What do you think you’re doing! You can’t do that here! You can’t do that here!” He started screaming right in my face, while the whole time still holding onto the yoyo.
One of my guy friends stepped in and tried to calm the man down asking what I had done wrong.
Immediately, this guy starts spewing out random things about “SF county law prohibits unlawful busking in specified areas under code #### of ####” and I tried to tell this man “Ok, Ill put it away”, but he kept screaming at my face saying “your’e not listening! Respect authority! Do you see my badge? You know what this means?” Keep in mind, he didn’t have any badge on, and he never showed us this “official badge he claimed he had” As the discussion went on, this guy began seeming more and more aggressive, and he still would not let go of my yoyo. I kept asking him to give it back and that I would put it away, but each time I tried to talk he would scream at me to “not disrespect authority”.
My friends kept trying to get this guy to back away from me, getting in between the two of us, but this guy started pushing them away to keep getting closer to me and backing me against a wall.
At this point I was starting to get scared, and was wondering if I was going to have to knee this guy to get him away from me. One of my guy friends started pushing the guy back, to which this guy started throwing more “law code” at my friend about assaulting an “authority official”. Finally, a security officer came over and confronted the man. Immediately, he started yelling at him to “Arrest this woman immediately”, which the officer explained to the man that he needed to calm down and explain the situation further. The officer tried to ask us questions, but this man just would interject and scream to “arrest me” over and over. The officer started getting aggressive with this man and told him that he needed to calm down or he was going to pepper spray him. This made the man very angry and he started screaming more law code into the air.
No dice. He ended up pepper sprayed and on the ground screaming, swearing, and calling me an “evil witch” over and over. Another police officer arrived and they questioned us for a bit. They frankly found the whole thing completely bizarre and had us eventually go on our way. The strange man was arrested, and we all went home a bit shooken up.
Needless to say, this whole ordeal definitely scared me and made me not feel like throwing for a day. I hope I never have to encounter such a man again as that was truly an extremely uncomfortable experience. My friends and I are over it, already joking about how my friends will make sure I don’t have a yoyo on me from now on when we go out. But oh well, best to be safe I suppose.
May this never happen to any of you. Scary scary. 
