We sat down anyway. The next feature began and we watched it until I rose and walked to the toilet. Near the entrance of the toilet was standing a fellow (about 15 years old) holding a tiny gun in the palm of his hand. He pointed the gun at me and although I was unsure whether it was real, I immediately grabbed his hand, twisted it, and took the gun from him.

I left the boy there and walked to a policeman standing near the concession stand. I showed him the gun in my hand and said, "There's a fellow over there by the bathroom who just assaulted me with this gun."

The policeman (a tall, slender, black fellow in his late 20s) would not take the gun from me. I told him I wanted to press charges. He said that if a person was assaulted by that particular type of gun it was the policy of the police department that charges could be pressed. He told me to go to the concession stand for the proper papers. In the meantime he said he would talk with the fellow who had assaulted me.

I walked over to the concession stand and gave a girl there the information about what had happened. She handed me a paper which gave the time and place of a court hearing. I walked back to the policeman and asked him if I would actually have to go to court on the day given on the citation or if the court day would be postponed. I told him I did not care if the prosecution plea-bargained with the fellow. I just wanted to make sure he was found guilty for what he had done.

I asked the policeman about the courthouse and he told me I would have to go to a large room there. He seemed to think we would be able to settle the affair in one day. I told him I did not want to sit around the whole day talking with some lawyer.

In the meantime, Steve had joined me, and the fellow who had assaulted me had been joined by a gang of his teenage, Hispanic-looking friends. They were standing around us and looked threatening.

Finally, Steve and I walked back into the theater and sat down just as the Meryl Streep movie began. We sat fairly close to the front and I noticed three or four of the teenagers had followed us and had spread out in seats around us. I was sitting on an aisle seat and to my right, directly across the aisle, one of the teenagers (wearing a white jacket) had sat down. He had curly black hair and looked Hispanic.

I finally decided to do something, stood up and walked back to where the policeman was. I intended to tell him that those fellows were bothering us and that he needed to do something about it.