Staying safe when you're out and about

I was out shopping recently. By the time I had almost reached home I was a tad weary and was focusing every bit of my attention on poor Mr. Rollator, who had had far to much of the quaint cobblestoned streets of our little slice of Heaven here in Berlin. We had had a most successful excursion procuring various potions to keep me from scaryng young children when all of a sudden, out of nowhere (as far as I could tell, a young man popped up right in front of me. He started telling me how he needed to find a doctor for his poor Mum, and asked me if I knew of any doctors he could take her to. We were one block away from my own doctor and the number and variety of doctors within reasonable walking distance from our little concrete cube they kindly refer to as a 'house'., so I pointed to where this cornucopia of care could be had. But he kept on talking. and making eye contact, I was growing a tad antsy. It was late afternoon and nobody was out and about at that moment. The he took my hands, and that is the split second that I realized what his real objective was. It was a cool day, and my hands were cold and my rings were getting a bit loose. My philosophy is that if someting is worth d oing, it's worth over-doing, and I love rings and at that moment I had on about 7 rings. None were extraordinarily expensive, but one was my Daddy's wedding ring; another was my wedding ring; another was a ring my husband gave me for our 40th anniversary 25 years ago. I am convinced that the lad's objective was to cleverly slip my rings off my cold, numb fingers, while looking deeply into my eyes, in the hopes that I wouldn't notice right away, and probably not until I got ready to go to bed and took off my rings and found them missing. It would have killed me to lose those treasures! So I started yelling and flailing my arms about, and he took off likea scalded cat. When I was talking with friends about it they advised me to get some pepper spray. First, I'm not sure it's legal here, but secondly, to get optimal use of such things, you have to be quick, agile, and strong. There may be other 80 year-old folks with PD who are all those things, but I am slow, inflexible, and weak. What would probably happen if I dared to have a can of pepper spray is to end up spraying my own self with the stuff and stumblingl out into the street when the one car that was going down it this afternoon was long gone. So I asked myself, "What is the last thing that a professional pick pocketer absolutely does NOT want? He probablly woldn't want attention drawn to him, and indeed even if I could yell any more, it's entirely possible that it wouldn't be sufficient to draw some brave young man to help me. So, I determined that the best way to make him beat feet would be something that would draw attention to him, sooo, I decided to get a whistle and wear it around my neck when I'm out and about - outside my coat where is is easy for me to grab and obvious to a scoundrel who thought about taking advantage of my infirmities could see that I was armed with sometthing he fears - the capability to draw attention to his slimy self.. So just though there might be some of your out there in PDLandia who
might be disinclined to unwillingly share your precious treasures with some piteous excuse for a human being and that you might be interested in joining the Whistle Brigade. Our home is about 2 blocks from a police station (and the police station shares the building with the German equivalent of the CIA), but that's not enough to scare the bad guys away. In fact, they kinda like it when people let their guards down, thinking that somehow a police presence will deter criminals. So be careful out there! Remember that if you are accompanied wy your ever-so-helpful Rollator, that you may as well put a sign on your back that says "Please Rob me" because that's a clue that you're not going to pose much of a problem for them.