-The Death’s head cane-

What do you do when you are the witness to street bullying? What did you do on the playground as a kid?

Sociologists tell us that most witnesses just watch, and the odds of an individual witness helping the victim of public violence only decreases when the number of witnesses increases. It's what John Darley and Bibb Latane identified as the "diffusion of responsibility" When a mentally deranged and naked man attacked an English church with a sword, parishioners fought back immediately and were congratulated for bucking the trend.

And what do you do when the bullying is subtle, and the threat is implied, or depends on the witness's own prejudgment of the aggressor?

Say you've got a Chinese takeout window and no one in the vicinity to watch over two children - neither of them over the age of ten - except a skinny librarian ordering Pork Chow Mein. Who's got their back when a large bald man with prison tattoos and a shaved head, a man carrying a cane capped with a skull, bends down and tells two suddenly still children how much they've grown, then asks about their families, even though neither child says anything, and the one the librarian can see past his bulk seems to have gone pale.

Am I overreacting, being too judgmental? Come on, a cane! Not the kind anyone leans on. It's just under three feet in length, and he carries it like a club. It looks solid enough to do some damage.

Just listen, I told myself. This could be nothing.

But my mind jumped ahead. All the best scenarios ended with the cook whipping carbon-steel knives through the takeout window. The worst ended (and began, really) with me getting too close to the death's head cane. That thing was a mace, really, and I bet it was even bigger than it looked.

And then he was gone.