It took 43 years, but this morning I finally had my first white-woman-clutch-her-purse-when-I-walk-by moment.

It was around 6:15am, and I was in the midst of my 5-mile run around Northwest Washington DC. I had headphones in my ear, but the music remained at a relatively low volume, so that I could hear everything going on around me. At that time of morning, there are other runners/walkers, people driving and walking to work, homeless people sleeping, peeing or wandering, and insanely large rats jumping out of unsuspecting places to scare the shit out of me. Quite a motley crew right?

I was running by a well-lit but quiet section of DC when I spotted a woman walking and talking on the phone. My head is always on a swivel while I run, so I saw her a good 30-45 seconds before she saw me, and I immediately noticed that she was talking loud on the phone, and not paying attention to her surroundings. I didn't give it much thought, because my plan was to run by her without making any eye contact, so I didn't startle her.

But about 10 seconds before I was to run by her, she saw me. She didn't stop talking on the phone, and she didn't appear to be startled--in fact she gave me a half-smile, which was nice, but not necessary. I began to nod my head at her, and then I noticed that her hands had gone from her pocket to her pocketbook. Not only were both her hands holding on to her pocketbook for dear life, but she also turned her body slightly away from me, as I ran by her. I really started to stop and say something rude but 1)I was way too tired and my thighs were burning way too damn much for me to do anything menacing and 2)That's all I needed was for a cop or another citizen to see me berating a woman (a white woman at that) from afar. That wouldn't end well.

But here's the thing that gets me. I was clearly running. I had a water bottle in my hand, headphones in my ear, and I was sweating like Kevin Garnett in a postgame interview. How the hell does one pivot from being in workout to robbery mode? I can understand being cautious when it is dark and early in the morning, but this woman was talking LOUD and not looking around for almost a minute before she saw me. Not to mention, if I really wanted to rob her, the clutching and turning technique would hardly be a deterrent--she'd still get got.

Honestly, the clutching part didn't bother me (yes it did) as much as the body turn. She decided that that the clutching only scratched the surface, so she had to slightly turn her body away to seal the safety deal. It wasn't even a full turn, it was just enough of a turn for me to get annoyed.

Again, I tried really hard to look at it from a woman's perspective, but I can only do that up to a certain point. I felt some kind of way about that, but on the positive side, what better month for it to go down right?