not that you asked but

Imagine that you were robbed. Not today, not right this minute, but that you were robbed. I guess that correctly you have been robbed; it's happened multiple times. That you were shoved into a dark alley, pushed against a wall, and told to hand over your money, which you did. Imagine that you didn't scream. Imagine that you did, and it didn't change anything. Imagine this happening multiple times, times where you said "No, I don't want to give you my money" and they walked away while you stood dumbfounded at your success; times when you said the exact same words and they took something more valuable, something harder to replace than money. Imagine you were robbed in Prague and didn't even know it until the next day, and people told you to carry your money in another pocket, travel in groups, or don't travel at all. They got your camera too that time, all those memories taken from you. Imagine that you have friends who were robbed at gunpoint and so when it finally gets to the point where you are able to talk about the times you've been robbed you feel like: well, yes, I was definitely robbed, but they were more robbed. You try not to make these comparisons out loud in the company of people who were robbed; you try not to make the comparisons in front of many people at all. Are there degrees of violation? You had something that you did not want to give someone else and they took it from you and that was not fair and the unfairness of it is the part of the conversation that is interesting. It seems like a lot of people who were never robbed have ideas about what it means but that's okay, you know what you know, and your friends know too. Imagine that someone comes at sits at the table with you and your friends. Imagine them describing having put a dollar on the table and someone picked it up. Were they robbed? Is it even the same word; can it be. Probably it's the same, probably it feels the same. I was robbed, she insists. Sure. In your mind, you're back in that alley, a strong hand at your throat, rats chattering around you, and all you want to be is anywhere but there. So if you want to know how this feels, if you want to know what I think, imagine that.