When I was in high school (back inthe dark ages)(also known as the early 70s) my high school band went to a music competition in Hawaii. One of the clarinet players mothers bought her a nice shiney metal "rape whistle." She was instructed to wear the whistle on a chain around her neck and if anyone bothered her she should blow it as loud as she could.
On the plane ride over one of my friends asked what was on the chain she was wearing and she proudly showed us. We asked her to demonstrate the whistle for us. Seeing as we were on a crowded airplane she refused. In many ways she was smarter than we were.
For the next couple days we endlessly badgered her to blow the whistle for us. She kept insisting that it was for emergencies only.
Being young and stupid we were not willing to accept that answer so the next evening when the whistle bearer and two of her friends walked around an isolated corner near an outdoor shopping center we jumped them.
One of us grabbed each girl, pinning her arms to her sides and slapping a hand over her mouth. The fourth "criminal" in our group grabbed the chain around the whistle bearers neck and tugged the whistle out of her blouse. At least that was the plan. Unfortunately the chain was too long and the whistle tangled up on some mysterious item of clothing under her blouse. The chain broke leaving the whistle lodged in a place where any of us would have loved to go looking for it.
But since we were just young and stupid, and not really intent on doing harm, we turned the girls so they could see who had grabbed them, then slowly released them while asking the whistle bearer to please retrieve her whistle.
As she pulled it from it's hiding place we each took a hold of one of the girls again and the fourth member of the group (who had lost the contest to see who didn't get to grab a girl) snatched the whistle from her hand and blew it three times as loud as his tuba player lungs could manage.
Then we stood there for what seemed like forever but in reality was probably only several seconds, while nothing happened. Finally I nudged the girl I was loosely holding and told her to scream.
She looked at me like I was crazy, but went ahead and screamed. In middle of her scream I put my hand suddenly back over her mouth.
We all waited again for several seconds. Finally a voice from around the corner interrupted our little experiment by yelling at us "If you damned kids don't stop making all that racket I'm calling the police."
At this point we reluctantly released the girls, handed the whistle bearer back her whistle, said "Yep, that's gonna to do you a lot of good." and walked away.
Maybe she needed an orange whistle...
The downside of this story is that for the next three days, every time those girls wanted to go anywhere they made us guys go with them. The upside is we got to spend our last three days with those three girls.
After we returned home the whistle bearer was grounded for two weeks. Apparently in relating her opinions of her parent's attempts to protect her she got a little personal with the comments like "stupid and useless." But once her grounding was over her parents allowed her to take some self defense classes. The next summer when a bunch of us were clowning around I grabbed her from behind and suddenly found my self being slammed painfully into the ground. Damned that girl learned fast!
David's point, although not as pithy as, say, this -- "And, also typically, the shootings took place in a "gun free" area." -- is almost identical. Everyone pick up a gun, we're gonna have a whole lot of fun!
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