On the bus the other day, something heavy fell to the floor beneath the senior citizen seats. A young woman a few seats away said to me, “You dropped something,” in a mildly unhelpful tone, so I got down and looked.

It was one of those things I call a “mat knife” because we used them in art school to cut the “mats” (cardboard inserts for frames). Since I was down there, I pulled it out and said to the guy next to me, “You dropped your mat knife.”

He was an elderly gent with a walker drawn up to him. “My what?” he said, and then he saw it and took it politely from me.

“I always carry my wallet, my keys, and my knife,” he said. “In case anyone tries to start something.”

Well, that was reassuring. Sitting next to me was an old man with a walker, who was carrying a razor blade in a holder that wasn’t holding together too well, just in case someone attacked him. I tried not to envision scenarios in which he might successfully defend himself, because the scenarios kept ending with me not getting out of the way of a wildly swinging arm in time.

It’s a dangerous world. I understand. But I think all the danger comes from people being afraid other people are going to attack them.

My adult kid told me the other night they heard someone moving around out back of their house. They came out back to find a police officer trying to put their metal back gate back on its post; he had removed it, though it wasn’t locked, in order to get into their back yard to search for some fugitive. There were a dozen police officers walking through the narrow road in back of the row of houses, and none of them would answer my kid’s questions, or even look at them. They were talking among themselves, though, mostly about whoever it was that had gotten away.

My kid and family were over to dinner last night, and my kid told me about a college friend whose brother used to use drugs. The friend’s brother eventually moved out, but one night the police broke the friend’s door down and searched the house for him. “He’s in Lancaster!” the friend kept saying. “I can give you his address! I can give you his phone number! I’ll call him for you!” but they ignored her.

I was reminded of the time I was fool enough to report that my car had been vandalized. You don’t do that in Philly. The cops don’t come out as a general rule for anything except murder or riot, or to make targeted busts like that time I watched what looked like a SWAT team assemble in front of my neighbor Janie’s house around the corner from where they were attacking.

But when I reported the vandalism (I had only been back in the city for a while then), a cop did come out. He insisted on fingerprinting my car, and admonished me severely for having touched the car. I stood there watching him. Eventually he went away. I could only figure that (a) he was trying to waste time (b) he had fingerprinting equipment he wanted to test or (c) he wanted to demonstrate his scorn for my pathetic complaint, at length, while speaking ever-so-politely to me.

All these angry, fearful people, trying to defend themselves against someone, anyone, are going to be the death of me.

I will endeavor to remain inoffensive.

So far, I have succeeded. I have been pulled over a couple of times in Philadelphia, before I got rid of my car, and both times the police officer who had pulled me over apologized. And the time I yelled at the young woman pursuing her boyfriend around their car (in front of my house) with a knife, she (and he) got back in the car and drove away, laughing. As long as I remember not to start something with elderly armed gentlemen on the bus, I should be all right.