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Page 2 of 3 Yes he did it! He tried a third time to get in calm, pushing at the same enraged sizable fellow. What happened next was unpleasant but predictable. Young man exploded out of the train, carrying the smaller foolish older man in front of him and screaming at the top of his lungs, "I'm gonna kill you @#%&$." (I can't say what he said in print and I think they have the same rules on the Internet, don't they? But you get the idea.) He repeated that same string of epithets again and again with rising intensity as he beat the poor, foolish, unfortunate to the ground with a flurry of kicks and blow.In less than two seconds the older fellow was on the ground with the young man continuing to batter him with devastating effect. Here was the situation. The older man was on the ground with his head being bounced between the steel pillar and the concrete platform. I gave him about five seconds to brain damage and maybe ten seconds to no brain at all. I considered my options. Nobody else on the platform, of course, made a move. In that instant of my observation of others I  noticed a clear gender distinction. The men were nervously gazing away or pushing their nose into a book or newspaper as if they would eat it. The women, on the other hand, were watching in shock and horror, unable to tear their eyes away . Remembering this later I thought,, well, the guys are probably embarrassed, thinking they should do something but afraid to do anything; while the women, knowing that they're not expected to do anything , could just let themselves feel their feelings of fear, sympathy, horror etc. Here's what I did. I lunged at the young man and pushed him hard in the chest, shouting at the same time, "stop it, you going to kill him, and there’s a policeman right over there! “ He stopped the kicking, I had actually pushed him several feet away from the prone figure of the battered, bleeding older man and stood motionless for a moment staring at me. Now this fellow had about 30 or 40 pounds on me and it wasn't fat either; and I was twice his age. On the other hand, I could tell from the way he was flailing away with his hands and feet that he was not a trained martial arts practitioner.
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