Well, I've lived here for nearly six years now and have had not one single physically damaging or scary personal incident happen to me in that time. I've seen a lot happen to others.
That changed a bit for me personally on Monday.
I had just dropped my 16-year-old sister-in-law off at school, 7:30 AM, and was driving down Carlos Pelligrini (9 de Julio parallel road), returning home. I stopped at the Santa Fe stoplight, in the second to the right-most lane. There was another car in the right-most lane. When the light turned green, I accelerated fast like I always do when I'm in front (I admit, I drive a bit fast at times), and so did the gentleman in the car next to me, accelerating at about the same speed, but just a hair slower. There was a car parked in his lane ahead and he started falling back and honking his horn at me like crazy, flashing his lights - I glanced over and behind me and saw him gesticulating like a madman. He got behind me, passed the car parked, then got back to my right and pulled up alongside, honking, shouting, gesticulating even more. As was his son in the passenger seat. Both shouting and waving their arms and their hands in that faux-Italian fashion.
I didn't understand why he was so upset at that moment and basically ignored him. He accelerated then and swerved to the left, in front of me, cutting me off and hitting the right front of my car with the left rear of his and kept going. I really don't think he intended to hit my car, but suspect that his driving skills were fairly poor and he misjudged the distance in trying to cut me off, his intention in my estimation being to scare me.
I wasn't about to leave it at that. I wasn't even sure at that point what damage he had caused - I felt my car shudder pretty violently, but didn't hear any crunching of metal. Later I discovered that it had knocked of the plastic cover to my right turn signal and had scraped about two feet of paint and grooved the metal from my right front fender.
My intention was to catch up with him and wait until he stopped and get his insurance information, or at least make a note of his license plate number. I followed him. Turned out he was dropping off his kids (his son in front, a daughter about 16 was in the back, whom I hadn't seen) at school right across from La Recova (next to Juana M if anyone knows that restaurant). I pulled in behind him when he stopped. He and his son both opened their doors and came out of the car towards me.
I got out, and they ran up to me and started yelling and screaming at me that I had tried to block him from getting out of his lane (ridiculously stupid) and shouting other crap so incoherently I couldn't even understand half what they were saying. The man actually had spittle flying from his lips with his rage.
He then accused ME of HITTING HIS CAR!
I tried to get a word in, but it wasn't happening, so I said in English "F... You." I was pretty upset by this time, although I had been trying to hold it in up to this point. Probably my first mistake.
He pushed me when I said that, almost knocking me into traffic behind me (we were standing on the edge of the sidewalk at this point, my back to the street). Without thinking, I moved forward and pushed him back (second mistake). He fell down on his butt.
Next thing I know, I was kneeling on curb of the sidewalk, supported forward by my hands. My knees and my left hand hurt quite a bit. I got up, not realizing what had happened immediately. Then I realized my left eye was tearing up so bad I couldn't see, tears running down the left side of my face - but it didn't hurt yet. Hell, I didn't even see any "lights" when whatever had happened, happened, but I realized that some violence had been committed upon my person.
His son had "sucker-punched" me in the left eye. I hadn't even seen him at that moment, as he was behind me and to my right, but he had moved forward and got close to me while his father was pushing me.
When I realized I'd been punched, I knew what had happened. I got really angry. Apparently, out of the mix of nationalities that I have been blessed with in my blood, the Scottish comes out quite strongly in moments like these. I looked over at his son and he must have seen the rage I now had in my one good eye. He put his hands out in front of himself, terrified, and started screaming "Soy menor! Soy menor! Soy menor!" (I'm a minor!)
I started advancing toward him - I was going to lay hands upon him in a most brutal way. Then my better sense kicked in and I remembered what a policeman aquaintance of mine here had once told me - it doesn't matter what a minor does to someone here, if you harm one hair on his head, you're going to jail, maybe even prison.
I managed to curb my anger enough not to touch him.
By this time, quite a crowd had gathered. They were all yelling at ME, calling me an idiot American, damned foreigner, etc. His kids had started yelling at me in English at some point, I wasn't sure why, because I had been speaking in Spanish up until this point - I was having some difficulty, sure, since I was pretty upset at how he had behaved up until the point his son slugged me, so my speech was a bit hesitant as I struggled to keep speech in Spanish. At one point I had slipped into a few words of English as his kids were screaming at me in English and he had the gall to tell me "You're in Argentina, you should be speaking in Spanish!"
Things calmed down a bit when everyone saw I wasn't going to murder the poor man's little "pebe" with my bare hands for what he'd done to me. At some point, the girl had gone off to school while I was recovering my senses but the kid had hung around for a bit. At some point in my confusion, though, before the police had come the "boy" managed to disappear.
The guy goes to get back in his car, but we had not had a civilized moment enough to exchange information yet. I wasn't about to let him leave. So I got in my car and moved it forward, blocking him in front before he got moving. At this point someone said "don't worry, the police are here."
One policeman jumped down off of a collectivo that had slowed down as it went by to let him out. The officer approached us and told me to go sit in my car calmly while he went and talked to the other guy.
By this time, I was beginning to feel my pain. My eye had swollen so much I couldn't see out it. A couple of days ago my glasses had broken and my right eye is not nearly as strong as my left and I was having problems seeing. I was quite dizzy and I had a problem with something in my nose. I felt my nose and it was obvious that it had not been touched. I got a towel that I carry in my car and blew my nose, and was quite surprised when I felt air come out of my lower eyelid. I then looked at the towel and saw a horrifying clump of blood and mucous. I also noticed that I had lost most of the skin on my left knee and my left shin and shoe were covered in blood, and now it was on the carpet in my car.
The cop came back to my car and I got out to meet him. He told me that the "gentleman" had told him I was trying to block his car into the right lane, that I had driven aggressively in trying to cause him to wreck, and had cut him off, hitting our cars in the process. I just stared at him for a moment in surprise at the boldest lie I'd ever heard told in such a moment, then explained to the policeman what had happened from my point of view. I took him to the front of my car and showed him the damage and told him to go look at the back of the other guy's car and explain if I had cut him off how the damage could possibly be as he said. The cop acknowledged that I seemed to be correct, that the other guy's story didn't quite hold up.
By this time two more cops showed up in a patrol car. One was an older guy, probably around 60, the other a younger one around mid-to-late twenties, the same approximate age as the first cop. The older cop took over and asked me to repeat what happened. At this point I also explained what his son had done to me, when he asked why I was so bloody and my eye swollen.
The older cop goes back and talks to the "gentleman." He comes back and says "the other gentleman is wounded also. This means that the fight was 'reciprocal' and if you want to press charges we will have to take you both down to the comisaria, impound both of your cars, and you will both spend the whole day working this out."
I asked him how on Earth the other guy could possibly be injured. He took me over to the guy and showed me his elbow, where he had bumped it on the ground when he fell. He had a little bit of scraped skin and there was not even any blood oozing from the slight scratch. Some wound.
My immediate reply was "ok, fine, let's go to the comisaria." I told the police that I had nothing to hide. And in fact I told him that I would press this case to its fullest if I had to because I had done absolutely nothing wrong up until the point where I shoved the other guy back after he shoved me.
I started mentioning the traffic cameras that are around on 9 de Julio and said that I would have them petitioned from the city government and it would prove absolutely what happened both on the road and most likely with the one-sided fight that had followed afterward. It was also at this point that the cop mentioned the man had admitted his son was 18 and the officer told me I was welcome to press assault charges against the absent son.
The cop also told me, "look, see what happened with the son from his point of view. He was trying to protect his father. What would you have done in his place if it was your father?" I laughed and said I'd probably have tried to restrain the guy, sure, but sucker punch him in one of the most sensitive and possibly damaging areas on the human body with one blow of the fist? No way. It was unprovoked, the amount of force he used. His father and I were never near that level of violence.
My statement about my willingness to move forward with charges worried the other guy. He came forward, seemingly apologetic, and said something to effect of "look, we were both upset, it's early in the morning, I was in a hurry to drop off my kids at school and we both behaved poorly. Let's let this go and we can go on about our day."
I looked at him for a moment and said "tell you what - you admit what really happened in front of these police officers and I won't go to the point of pressing charges about the accident. We can exchange information and be on our way." I didn't mention anything about his son at that point.
He agreed and made a statement that he was at fault for getting into a rage and then hitting my car. The officers wrote down a statement, pulled two passersby over and had them sign as witnesses, taking down their personal information. The only problem I had at that point is that I was quite dizzy and having a hard time concentrating, bleeding internally, bleeding externally, and couldn't see out of my left eye nor read out of my right eye. I really felt like I was about to collapse. I couldn't quite make out what the police report said, although I could make out a few words, but I was so exhausted and physically in pain I signed it. I'm hoping it had in there what the cops said they were going to write down.
I'm going down in a day or two to get a copy of the report and see.
At that point, the cops told us to leave. The other guy pats me on the shoulder, winks, and says "go get some ice on that. You'll have quite a black eye." I'm sure he was quite proud of what his cowardly little son had done.
I get back to my apartment then. About an hour had passed during the incident. My wife is nearly hysterical because I'd not thought to bring my phone with me for such a simple task as dropping off her sister at school. When she saw me, she almost fainted. Her first insistence was that I go to the hospital immediately, but I felt like an idiot letting an 18 year old punk get the drop on me like he did and was thinking it wasn't that serious, to boot. But I blew my nose again, felt the air come out of my eye, and saw the profound amount of blood that followed and realized again that it was a bit more serious than just a black eye.
I went to Hospital Aleman. As usual, great service, great doctors, the whole nine yards. I saw a general practitioner who told me I may have some severe problems. She sent me to get an x-ray and a tomografia (PET, CAT? It looked like a CAT scanning machine but I'm not too familiar with such specifics - I laid on my back and they inserted me into a cylinder that scanned my skull). I then talked to a couple of doctors who interpreted the tomografia results and said my suborbital ridge had been fractured right under my eye, and the tissue that separates my eye socket from my sinuses had a hole torn between the two. They sent me to an ophthalmologist for further examination.
BTW - the whole time I'm conversing with the doctors, a lot of the information fairly technical, not one word of English was exchanged. I kept thinking back to that prick telling me I should speak Spanish when in Argentina...
It was about this time that I realized I had no feeling in my left upper lip, gums and part of my nose and the skin between my nose and lips. I asked the ophthalmologist about this and he told me that I had nerve damage. He wouldn't know if it was permanent or not for some time yet. I ended up getting a shot (I believe it was hydro-cortisone) to decrease some of the swelling of the muscle tissue around the damaged nerve. Didn't help, at least not yet.
He told me my eyeball was swelling, but there was no damage to my retina. He said I was extremely lucky that the fractured bone had not loosened and cut the muscles that move my eye. The fracture was in a U-shape, the top of the U being at the top of the ridge, just about the size of a knuckle. They have to watch my eye and make sure the swelling goes down - but my left pupil remains more dilated than my right when exposed to light. He also told me that they have to watch the hole in my tissue between eye socket and sinus and that I may need surgery to close that. It's actually very dangerous - the eye socket internally is sterile but obviously the sinuses are not.
So the result - the "gentleman" who started it all had a tiny scratch on his elbow that didn't even bleed and I had most of the skin removed from my knee, blood all over, a fractured eye socket, nerve damage that may or may not be permanent and a hole in my eye socket that could conceivably cause me to lose my eye (his words) in a worst-case scenario. On top of that, there is possibly some damage to my eye related to the swelling.
I'm thinking about either filing charges against the son or suing.
I didn't want to make a big case out of it, but the truth is, the more I think about it, the more angry I get about how they reacted to something they caused to begin with. Also comes to mind the humiliating feeling I was getting as the younger crowd stood around and jeered at me like I was some kind of monster while one of their own countrymen and students started the violence and so cowardly finished it.
Will it do any good? Probably not. But maybe it will make me feel a little better. I don't know.
I've NEVER struck someone in rage as a first strike. I have been involved in fights before, although it's been years. Mostly in high school, idiocies. I was in the band and the football players loved to pick on guys in the band. They didn't know I played ice hockey (this was in the South - there were no hockey teams associated with schools) and often got a surprise when they tried to bully me. I always taught my sons not to fight unless in self defense and I've always tried to follow that rule as well.
These guys were just belligerent from the start and seemed to me to want blood. It just ain't right.
That changed a bit for me personally on Monday.
I had just dropped my 16-year-old sister-in-law off at school, 7:30 AM, and was driving down Carlos Pelligrini (9 de Julio parallel road), returning home. I stopped at the Santa Fe stoplight, in the second to the right-most lane. There was another car in the right-most lane. When the light turned green, I accelerated fast like I always do when I'm in front (I admit, I drive a bit fast at times), and so did the gentleman in the car next to me, accelerating at about the same speed, but just a hair slower. There was a car parked in his lane ahead and he started falling back and honking his horn at me like crazy, flashing his lights - I glanced over and behind me and saw him gesticulating like a madman. He got behind me, passed the car parked, then got back to my right and pulled up alongside, honking, shouting, gesticulating even more. As was his son in the passenger seat. Both shouting and waving their arms and their hands in that faux-Italian fashion.
I didn't understand why he was so upset at that moment and basically ignored him. He accelerated then and swerved to the left, in front of me, cutting me off and hitting the right front of my car with the left rear of his and kept going. I really don't think he intended to hit my car, but suspect that his driving skills were fairly poor and he misjudged the distance in trying to cut me off, his intention in my estimation being to scare me.
I wasn't about to leave it at that. I wasn't even sure at that point what damage he had caused - I felt my car shudder pretty violently, but didn't hear any crunching of metal. Later I discovered that it had knocked of the plastic cover to my right turn signal and had scraped about two feet of paint and grooved the metal from my right front fender.
My intention was to catch up with him and wait until he stopped and get his insurance information, or at least make a note of his license plate number. I followed him. Turned out he was dropping off his kids (his son in front, a daughter about 16 was in the back, whom I hadn't seen) at school right across from La Recova (next to Juana M if anyone knows that restaurant). I pulled in behind him when he stopped. He and his son both opened their doors and came out of the car towards me.
I got out, and they ran up to me and started yelling and screaming at me that I had tried to block him from getting out of his lane (ridiculously stupid) and shouting other crap so incoherently I couldn't even understand half what they were saying. The man actually had spittle flying from his lips with his rage.
He then accused ME of HITTING HIS CAR!
I tried to get a word in, but it wasn't happening, so I said in English "F... You." I was pretty upset by this time, although I had been trying to hold it in up to this point. Probably my first mistake.
He pushed me when I said that, almost knocking me into traffic behind me (we were standing on the edge of the sidewalk at this point, my back to the street). Without thinking, I moved forward and pushed him back (second mistake). He fell down on his butt.
Next thing I know, I was kneeling on curb of the sidewalk, supported forward by my hands. My knees and my left hand hurt quite a bit. I got up, not realizing what had happened immediately. Then I realized my left eye was tearing up so bad I couldn't see, tears running down the left side of my face - but it didn't hurt yet. Hell, I didn't even see any "lights" when whatever had happened, happened, but I realized that some violence had been committed upon my person.
His son had "sucker-punched" me in the left eye. I hadn't even seen him at that moment, as he was behind me and to my right, but he had moved forward and got close to me while his father was pushing me.
When I realized I'd been punched, I knew what had happened. I got really angry. Apparently, out of the mix of nationalities that I have been blessed with in my blood, the Scottish comes out quite strongly in moments like these. I looked over at his son and he must have seen the rage I now had in my one good eye. He put his hands out in front of himself, terrified, and started screaming "Soy menor! Soy menor! Soy menor!" (I'm a minor!)
I started advancing toward him - I was going to lay hands upon him in a most brutal way. Then my better sense kicked in and I remembered what a policeman aquaintance of mine here had once told me - it doesn't matter what a minor does to someone here, if you harm one hair on his head, you're going to jail, maybe even prison.
I managed to curb my anger enough not to touch him.
By this time, quite a crowd had gathered. They were all yelling at ME, calling me an idiot American, damned foreigner, etc. His kids had started yelling at me in English at some point, I wasn't sure why, because I had been speaking in Spanish up until this point - I was having some difficulty, sure, since I was pretty upset at how he had behaved up until the point his son slugged me, so my speech was a bit hesitant as I struggled to keep speech in Spanish. At one point I had slipped into a few words of English as his kids were screaming at me in English and he had the gall to tell me "You're in Argentina, you should be speaking in Spanish!"
Things calmed down a bit when everyone saw I wasn't going to murder the poor man's little "pebe" with my bare hands for what he'd done to me. At some point, the girl had gone off to school while I was recovering my senses but the kid had hung around for a bit. At some point in my confusion, though, before the police had come the "boy" managed to disappear.
The guy goes to get back in his car, but we had not had a civilized moment enough to exchange information yet. I wasn't about to let him leave. So I got in my car and moved it forward, blocking him in front before he got moving. At this point someone said "don't worry, the police are here."
One policeman jumped down off of a collectivo that had slowed down as it went by to let him out. The officer approached us and told me to go sit in my car calmly while he went and talked to the other guy.
By this time, I was beginning to feel my pain. My eye had swollen so much I couldn't see out it. A couple of days ago my glasses had broken and my right eye is not nearly as strong as my left and I was having problems seeing. I was quite dizzy and I had a problem with something in my nose. I felt my nose and it was obvious that it had not been touched. I got a towel that I carry in my car and blew my nose, and was quite surprised when I felt air come out of my lower eyelid. I then looked at the towel and saw a horrifying clump of blood and mucous. I also noticed that I had lost most of the skin on my left knee and my left shin and shoe were covered in blood, and now it was on the carpet in my car.
The cop came back to my car and I got out to meet him. He told me that the "gentleman" had told him I was trying to block his car into the right lane, that I had driven aggressively in trying to cause him to wreck, and had cut him off, hitting our cars in the process. I just stared at him for a moment in surprise at the boldest lie I'd ever heard told in such a moment, then explained to the policeman what had happened from my point of view. I took him to the front of my car and showed him the damage and told him to go look at the back of the other guy's car and explain if I had cut him off how the damage could possibly be as he said. The cop acknowledged that I seemed to be correct, that the other guy's story didn't quite hold up.
By this time two more cops showed up in a patrol car. One was an older guy, probably around 60, the other a younger one around mid-to-late twenties, the same approximate age as the first cop. The older cop took over and asked me to repeat what happened. At this point I also explained what his son had done to me, when he asked why I was so bloody and my eye swollen.
The older cop goes back and talks to the "gentleman." He comes back and says "the other gentleman is wounded also. This means that the fight was 'reciprocal' and if you want to press charges we will have to take you both down to the comisaria, impound both of your cars, and you will both spend the whole day working this out."
I asked him how on Earth the other guy could possibly be injured. He took me over to the guy and showed me his elbow, where he had bumped it on the ground when he fell. He had a little bit of scraped skin and there was not even any blood oozing from the slight scratch. Some wound.
My immediate reply was "ok, fine, let's go to the comisaria." I told the police that I had nothing to hide. And in fact I told him that I would press this case to its fullest if I had to because I had done absolutely nothing wrong up until the point where I shoved the other guy back after he shoved me.
I started mentioning the traffic cameras that are around on 9 de Julio and said that I would have them petitioned from the city government and it would prove absolutely what happened both on the road and most likely with the one-sided fight that had followed afterward. It was also at this point that the cop mentioned the man had admitted his son was 18 and the officer told me I was welcome to press assault charges against the absent son.
The cop also told me, "look, see what happened with the son from his point of view. He was trying to protect his father. What would you have done in his place if it was your father?" I laughed and said I'd probably have tried to restrain the guy, sure, but sucker punch him in one of the most sensitive and possibly damaging areas on the human body with one blow of the fist? No way. It was unprovoked, the amount of force he used. His father and I were never near that level of violence.
My statement about my willingness to move forward with charges worried the other guy. He came forward, seemingly apologetic, and said something to effect of "look, we were both upset, it's early in the morning, I was in a hurry to drop off my kids at school and we both behaved poorly. Let's let this go and we can go on about our day."
I looked at him for a moment and said "tell you what - you admit what really happened in front of these police officers and I won't go to the point of pressing charges about the accident. We can exchange information and be on our way." I didn't mention anything about his son at that point.
He agreed and made a statement that he was at fault for getting into a rage and then hitting my car. The officers wrote down a statement, pulled two passersby over and had them sign as witnesses, taking down their personal information. The only problem I had at that point is that I was quite dizzy and having a hard time concentrating, bleeding internally, bleeding externally, and couldn't see out of my left eye nor read out of my right eye. I really felt like I was about to collapse. I couldn't quite make out what the police report said, although I could make out a few words, but I was so exhausted and physically in pain I signed it. I'm hoping it had in there what the cops said they were going to write down.
I'm going down in a day or two to get a copy of the report and see.
At that point, the cops told us to leave. The other guy pats me on the shoulder, winks, and says "go get some ice on that. You'll have quite a black eye." I'm sure he was quite proud of what his cowardly little son had done.
I get back to my apartment then. About an hour had passed during the incident. My wife is nearly hysterical because I'd not thought to bring my phone with me for such a simple task as dropping off her sister at school. When she saw me, she almost fainted. Her first insistence was that I go to the hospital immediately, but I felt like an idiot letting an 18 year old punk get the drop on me like he did and was thinking it wasn't that serious, to boot. But I blew my nose again, felt the air come out of my eye, and saw the profound amount of blood that followed and realized again that it was a bit more serious than just a black eye.
I went to Hospital Aleman. As usual, great service, great doctors, the whole nine yards. I saw a general practitioner who told me I may have some severe problems. She sent me to get an x-ray and a tomografia (PET, CAT? It looked like a CAT scanning machine but I'm not too familiar with such specifics - I laid on my back and they inserted me into a cylinder that scanned my skull). I then talked to a couple of doctors who interpreted the tomografia results and said my suborbital ridge had been fractured right under my eye, and the tissue that separates my eye socket from my sinuses had a hole torn between the two. They sent me to an ophthalmologist for further examination.
BTW - the whole time I'm conversing with the doctors, a lot of the information fairly technical, not one word of English was exchanged. I kept thinking back to that prick telling me I should speak Spanish when in Argentina...
It was about this time that I realized I had no feeling in my left upper lip, gums and part of my nose and the skin between my nose and lips. I asked the ophthalmologist about this and he told me that I had nerve damage. He wouldn't know if it was permanent or not for some time yet. I ended up getting a shot (I believe it was hydro-cortisone) to decrease some of the swelling of the muscle tissue around the damaged nerve. Didn't help, at least not yet.
He told me my eyeball was swelling, but there was no damage to my retina. He said I was extremely lucky that the fractured bone had not loosened and cut the muscles that move my eye. The fracture was in a U-shape, the top of the U being at the top of the ridge, just about the size of a knuckle. They have to watch my eye and make sure the swelling goes down - but my left pupil remains more dilated than my right when exposed to light. He also told me that they have to watch the hole in my tissue between eye socket and sinus and that I may need surgery to close that. It's actually very dangerous - the eye socket internally is sterile but obviously the sinuses are not.
So the result - the "gentleman" who started it all had a tiny scratch on his elbow that didn't even bleed and I had most of the skin removed from my knee, blood all over, a fractured eye socket, nerve damage that may or may not be permanent and a hole in my eye socket that could conceivably cause me to lose my eye (his words) in a worst-case scenario. On top of that, there is possibly some damage to my eye related to the swelling.
I'm thinking about either filing charges against the son or suing.
I didn't want to make a big case out of it, but the truth is, the more I think about it, the more angry I get about how they reacted to something they caused to begin with. Also comes to mind the humiliating feeling I was getting as the younger crowd stood around and jeered at me like I was some kind of monster while one of their own countrymen and students started the violence and so cowardly finished it.
Will it do any good? Probably not. But maybe it will make me feel a little better. I don't know.
I've NEVER struck someone in rage as a first strike. I have been involved in fights before, although it's been years. Mostly in high school, idiocies. I was in the band and the football players loved to pick on guys in the band. They didn't know I played ice hockey (this was in the South - there were no hockey teams associated with schools) and often got a surprise when they tried to bully me. I always taught my sons not to fight unless in self defense and I've always tried to follow that rule as well.
These guys were just belligerent from the start and seemed to me to want blood. It just ain't right.
I'm sorry you had to go through that. Life can change in an instant. 
