Yesterday, I walked in the evening over to the Alamo Drafthouse. On the way, a group of men were causing a commotion on the sidewalk. I crossed the road in the middle of the block in order to avoid them.
Two or three men were yelling at another, who was sitting on a low wall attached to the fence around the park. They were middle-aged, 30s-40s, maybe homeless or if not just in the position where you take care of your business out on the street. The sitting man was not shouting back, just sitting there. One of the aggressors grabbed a bottle of Jameson and started to walk back over to the sitting man. One of the guys in the group, part of things but on the periphery, took the bottle out of the man's hand without saying a word. The man returned the bottle a bag some steps away from the conflict.
The man gave up the bottle without protest. It was like he was considering taking things to the next level. The level where someone gets beamed with a 750 ml glass bottle. The kind of thing where someone could die. The deescalator made no big deal of it. He was just like, "Nope, that's not what's happening." I wonder how many lives have been saved by some small action like that.
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