assaulted i was

A client assaulted me the other day. I have been working with people now for 20 odd years, and some of them have been seriously messed up, but yet not one of them has ever tried to hit me. In fact, that's not really true, I was kicked on the sole of my shoe once by a 16 year old boy. He was attempting to provoke me by spraying me with a water pistol, and when I could stand it no more, I jumped up from my chair. I think this gave him more of a scare than he had expected. I suppose he thought I was going to beat him up or something. After he had kicked me and jumped on the waste paper bin, he very quickly calmed down. Believe it or not, I apologised for scaring him, and he apologised for provoking me. He managed to push the bin back into shape, and all was well with the world.

Anyway, I had this meeting with this couple the other day. It lasted no more than five minutes. By the end of it the woman had grabbed me by the throat and threatened "you better watch it, you get yours." Fortunately her paranoid schizophrenic heroin using husband was a bit more together than she was, and he was able to intervene. He pulled her off me and ushered her through the door. The amazing thing about all of this is that just before she leapt on me, she said to her husband, "I don't know why you're bothering, he's not listening to a word you say." Now, without going into all the details, the truth is, although I will deny this to my dying day, I was just thinking, "why the fuck do I have to listen to this? I don't know why I bother."

I didn't bother reporting her to the police. I reckoned that she had enough problems at the moment, and she didn't do me any physical harm. However, I think the real reason I didn't contact the police is that I was feeling too guilty at having provoked her. Although, how was I to know that she was telepathic?