By Bearded Mike

This is a true account of a chance meeting I had a few years back in NYC.

I was on a business trip to New York, and on a morning when I had no commitments I’d been down to Battery Park and was travelling back uptown by bus. It was around lunchtime and the bus was already crowded – people were standing but I was OK and had one of those side-facing seats toward the front of the bus.

I found myself staring at the back-side of a guy who was strap-hanging the same as all the other standing passengers but there was something different about this guy – showing through a back pocket of his jeans I could clearly see the outline of a pair of handcuffs!

My heart was racing, the adrenaline pumping. Was this guy a cop? But he wasn’t in uniform. Was he a collector of cuffs like myself? Or was there some other reason why he was carrying cuffs? I had no way of knowing.

But suddenly I did have a possible way of knowing. Unexpectedly the bus lurched and the standing passengers were jolted to such an extent that “my” guy stepped backward – right onto my foot. He half turned, looked down at me and muttered an apology. I assured him that I was perfectly OK and he went back to his strap-hanging – and I went back to staring at his cuffs. I was fantasising about trying to strike up some sort of conversation with the guy; a perfect opportunity had presented itself when he stepped on my foot, but I’d bottled out and hadn’t had the guts to get into conversation

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