It’s Easy To Be A Hero When The Other Guy’s A Moron

I’ve encountered my share of strange and unusual people during my time in Germany, but this next yahoo took the cake and ate it…

A few years ago The Girlfriend and I spent most Friday nights recharging at a local Irish pub, which consisted of drinking buckets of Guinness (me), flirting with the well endowed female bar staff (me… and her, come to think of it), being nauseous at the thought of actually drinking the glasses of cherry and banana juice being poured for the non-drinkers (both of us), smoking too much (her – long since nicotine free) before finally stumbling home in the wee hours of the morning. Normally it was an uneventful five minute walk back, but on one particular night I ran into what was and I imagine still is one of the stupidest people on the planet.

Our chosen route that night took us past one of the stairwells leading down to the subway. I happened to catch a movement in the corner of my eye on the landing below, and taking a closer look, I saw a guy in his late 20s pinning a girl around the same age to the wall by the throat. He was having words, she was crying.

In retrospect it probably wasn’t the smartest thing to do, but I yelled down at the guy asking what the fuck he thought he was doing. Pure instinct backed by the right amount of booze = bulletproof and feeling rather ominous, I suppose. Having scared the asshole out of 10 years of his life, he immediately let his now-ex-girlfriend go – who took off as fast as her feet would carry her – and backed his way up the stairs on the opposite side as I descended like a short but loud Angel Of Potential Dismemberment. The possibility that I could get shot or stabbed never occurred to me, but that may have had something to do with the goon’s white jacket, glasses, and mop of curly blonde hair. The look of a real live World Of Warcraft bad ass; invincible only with joystick in hand…

I don’t remember my exact words, but the pounding I promised was full of profanity and body parts scattered about in the aftermath. All in english, but Dweezil clearly understood and must have believed I was capable of pulling his lungs out through his tear ducts, because by the time I reached the landing he’d scooted up the stairs and well out of my reach. Rather than use the advantage of higher ground to drop something heavy on me, spit, or simply take off, however, he unleashed the ultimate defence:

“I’m going to call the police!”

He brandished his cellphone to add some gravity to the threat, and I fell silent. For about a second. It took that long for my brain to realize the goofball was serious. At which point I started laughing; from the gut “I fucking dare you to explain this to the cops” laughter. It definitely struck a nerve because he stood there spluttering like an overfed baby, jaws flapping like a fish on land.

And then he let me have it.

“You’re so… so… so… un-Deutsch!”

I’ve been called a lot of things, but “un-German” was a new one. I’m hoping the comment stemmed from fear rather than the belief that if I had been German he would have been able to beat on his girlfriend without anyone running interference. Laughing even harder I climbed the stairs, figuring he’d either lay into me with another gem from his (arse)nal of one-liners or vanish by the time I got to the top.

Thankfully he chose the latter. It would have sucked to go down as the first man in history to actually die laughing.