This is why I try to take the earlier bus

Today a completely strange guy managed to get his hands around my throat. To be sure he wasn't trying to harm me. He was trying to show me how to defend myself, despite of my pointed disinterest and gradual progress in ignoring/edging away. In fact he was trying to get me to grab his head, which I declined to participate, leading to him grabbing my wrists and putting my hands on his head, which surprised me enough that he went ahead with the demo in "how to escape choke-hold". He let go immediately when I pushed at his hand though, so all in all it was fairly harmless in my scale of Things That Happen During Public Transit, and no one had to get kneed anywhere painful (well he was standing that close and I kind of strongly dislike strange people touching me).

The main reason that I'm making a post about it though, is that the post-doc from my lab was passing by and came to my rescue. (All six foot something of him, I was duly impressed.) I believe this is the first time someone "rescued" me from anything (unless you count my mom's various attempts, successful and not, to rescue me from my various mishaps as a child).

I still haven't figured out how I feel about it though. It's somewhere between amusement, embarrassment, gratitude, and bafflement.

The upshot of it all was the guy thought I was a boy (for which I am grateful -- it's ALWAYS worse when they know you're a girl), which the post-doc, by claiming "She's not interested", sort of let slip. Oh well.