Very shortly after leaving Des Moines, one hits the Mississippi River and crosses the river into Nebraska. Omaha is a small but very modern and complete city on the banks of the Missouri River. My destination was Creighton University. Thanks to the maps that came with the registration material, I quickly found both the school and the dorm I needed to get to. The dorms were actually medium-sized, semi-furnished apartments. My “room” had two bunk beds, a couch, TV, dining room with table and 4 chairs, and a pretty well equipped kitchen with fridge, freezer, oven and stove. I was going to have a roommate – a pre-med student named Jim. Jim was also from New York.

Registration for classes had ended for the day and would continue tomorrow. Although I was registered for my class, I needed to pick up a temporary ID to be on campus and in the library, etc. Orientation was tomorrow afternoon and classes would start the day after tomorrow, so I had nothing much to do today. I was very tired and looking forward to trying out one of those bunks.

Anatomy class would be traditional didactic class work, which means the professor talking at the students and the students listening, in the morning and lab in the afternoon, 5 days a week. There were two main instructors and a bunch of assistants. There would be three exams based on anatomical sections: chest and abdomen, then head and neck, followed by extremities. The class was made up of a wide range of people from all over the US and Canada. Some were pre-med, some were medical students who needed to make up an anatomy class, and some were dental students who would only take the part of the class relevant to dental medicine, which is chest and abdomen plus the head and neck anatomy. So they would be with us for about 2/3 of the course.

The class would be all together for the classroom instruction and in groups of 4 for the lab. Each group of 4 would receive a human cadaver to dissect, and each group would include 1 or 2 dental students. The dental students were spread out this way to ensure that the cadavers were all used consistently and fairly by each of the groups.

There were very strict rules and protocol for the use of human cadavers. We had to avoid ever referring to the body as “it.” We were instructed to say, “the cadaver,” “he,” “she,” or use the cadaver’s name in life. My group’s cadaver was called Clare in life and we called her Clare. My group consisted of myself, Sherry—a dental student, Dave— a medical student, and Kim — a graduate student. Sherry was from Texas and was actually retaking the class because she was unable to complete it at her home university. Dave was from a student in Creighton and from Nebraska and had failed the class the previous year and Kim was taking it for credit in his degree program.

Class was long, hard and a great learning experience. There were 60 people in the class with about 15 cadavers. I had purchased the books and a lot of the dissection tools but I didn’t have everything I needed, so I bought some more. Each student was loaned a “bone box,” which was a toolbox with a complete disassembled skeleton. This I left at home and would work with it to learn the anatomy as needed. I would skateboard to and from class and sometimes home for lunch. My roommate Jim was re-taking a chemistry class, so his schedule was not as hectic as mine. I tried to help him a bit with his chemistry.

An interesting thing happened about a week after class started as I was skateboarding back from the cadaver lab. I had been working on Clare, trying to get the conduction system of the heart straight in my head. The subject is fairly complicated and it was quite late – about 2 A.M. I was halfway home when a Lincoln Continental passed me and pulled over in front of me while I was going under a bridge. It was the only secluded part of the road between the lab and the dorm. There were three people in the car and my New York instincts kicked in immediately. I got off the skateboard and held it in my right hand. I stood where I was, not approaching the car that was blocking my way. A single black male got out of the passenger side, and with a blustery swagger he came up to me and said, “Give me your wallet!” I was gripping the skateboard tightly and ready to use it to defend myself.

 “No!” I said.

 “What the f*ck. Listen, give me your money now.” He then hid his right hand behind him and said, “I got a gun—give me your money.”

 “No.”

 “Listen, give me that watch or my friends and I are going to beat the shit out of you.”

I took off the watch and gently tossed it to him.

 “Turn around,” he ordered.

 “No,” I said as I tightened the grip on my skateboard and with my other hand started to write the license plate down on my hand.

 “Don’t you be writing down no number.”

No response.

 “Fuck,” he said and trotted back to the car.

I got back on the board and went in the other direction. I found a campus security officer and told him what happened.

 “What—you were mugged?” he exclaimed. “And you said ‘no’ to a mugger with a gun?”

 “He did not have a gun,” I said.

 “How do you know? You said he claimed to have one.”

 “True, but he was just using that line to intimidate me.”

 “You really should do what a mugger says or you could get hurt,” he replied.

The security guard, named Benny, called the other campus security and the local police to report the robbery. I was brought to the campus security office to fill out the report and wait for the local PD. A uniformed officer came and got a description of the car and the license plate. The car turned out to be stolen, but he would go out and look for it. The police would also issue a BOLO (be on the look out) alert for the car. A short time later a detective named Rodgers came to take a statement from me. It was around 3:00 A.M. now. He asked me questions and took notes along with a description of the mugging and made the same musings about not saying no to a mugger. I shrugged and assured him there was no gun, just a threat.

He then asked how I could be contacted locally and how long I would be in town, as well as asking for ID. I gave it to him and he said, “It figures, only a guy from New York would say no to a mugger. Have you been mugged before?”

 “No, this is a first.”

 “Well, you are lucky.”

I didn’t tell Detective Rodgers that I was ready to smash the skateboard across the guy’s face if necessary. Rodgers asked me if I would recognize the mugger again and I said yes. His face was a vivid memory. After finishing the info for the university police, Detective Rogers took me to police headquarters. He got me a bunch of mug shot books to look at. There were hundreds of black males of a similar age in those books.

I gently pointed out to Detective Rodgers that there was a female in the lineup. He looked at the picture and said, no, that is a guy who dresses in drag to mug people.

 “Wow! and I thought she was cute.” I said and the detective laughed.

A large, burly, uniformed sergeant now came in and asked me, “Are you the one who refused to turn over your wallet to three armed muggers?”

 “Well, sort of,” I said. “There were three, but only one got out of the car, and he didn’t really have a gun, so I figured none of them had a gun.”

The sergeant stared at me in astonishment until Detective Rodgers broke the silence, “He’s from New York.”

 “So living in New York makes you an expert on mugging?”

 “No, but I have seen a lot of mugging victims because I worked on the ambulance and I was not going to be one of those victims. Plus, I’ve heard enough scenarios of experienced muggers and joy riding idiots who were seeing what they could get away with. I haven’t seen any muggers as cute as yours, however,” I said, pointing to the picture in the mug shot book. They all laughed.

I briefed them on my stint on the ambulance and what I was doing in Omaha. I assured them that I was not permanently traumatized by this and would help them if needed to ID the guys. Truthfully, my feelings were that my family would be more traumatized when I told them. The sergeant asked me if I would lose my street cred for getting mugged and losing my watch in the hick city of Omaha. Again, we laughed. I also agreed to not say no to any muggers in their city again and to give them a call if I saw the guys hanging out around the university. We all seemed to agree that the university was a good place for muggers because it tended to be full of non-street wise people.

Detective Rodgers gave me a ride back to the dorm. Before I got out of the car he handed me his business card and said, “If there is anything you need while you are here, give me a call.”

 “Actually, there is something you could help me with,” I said. “Do you know where I could get a watch?”

Detective Rodgers laughed at that and I smiled.

 “Actually, I do.” He went on, “You could go to Tony Contey’s pawn shop. It’s one of the places I was going to check to see if it shows up there. You should check there for your watch as well as for a new-used watch.”

Detective Rodgers had just given me the name and address of a fence.

 “Thanks.”

 “Bye.”

I looked toward the dorm and could see the sunrise reflecting off the windows. I looked at my wrist where my watch should be to see what time it was and shrugged. I really didn’t need the watch to know that I had just pulled an all-nighter and needed to take a shower and get ready for class.