5 Thoughts on being confronted by a homeless person.

Here's the background: 

I was walking the dog in the early morning (1 am) to the post office to drop off a DVD and pick up my mail. On my way back, a seemingly homeless, mentally ill man confronted me, and wouldn't let me pass, jumping into my path every time I tried to navigate around him. At first he demanded that I explain why I was in his place, then later accusing me of stealing something from him. On my final try to pass him, he shoved me back, and so I pulled my phone out and asked him if I should call the police, to which he agreed, but then immediately began to walk away. I followed him for two blocks as I was on the phone with 911, but then stopped and waited for police to arrive.

Five thoughts:

1. Clearly he was mentally ill, yet as soon as he saw that I was calling the police, he backed off -- that showed rational thinking, knowing that he was in jeopardy of being arrested for simple assault. Even as I followed him, he never once walked back towards me; he stopped to yell at me to stop following him, but he never came back at me again. If I were called in to testify in a trial against him, I would clearly note that he made a rational decision to drop the issue and walk away, knowing that I was calling the police.
2. At the start of the confrontation, the very first thought that crossed my mind was confusion about why a seemingly homeless guy would confront me and block me from walking. I had my headphones on so I didn't actually hear what he was saying until he moved aggressively to block my path.
3. In the span of a minute, my mind then ran through four scenarios: (1) If he threw a punch or pulled out a weapon, I would crush his trachea then break his neck; (2) I could walk backwards, but if I turned my back he might attack my blind side, and walking backwards might backfire and trigger an attack anyway; I should just kick his ass; (3) I really want to kick his ass and send him to the hospital if he keeps trying to block me from walking around him; (4) If he pushes me, I'll call the police and let them handle it; if he tries to escalate, I'll kick his ass.
4. Twice in the past, when my dog had been physically assaulted by another dog, I have physically hurt that other dog to get it off mine; in one case, the dog ran away. You know how Bruce Banner -- the fictional character who turns into the Hulk -- tries to avoid confrontations? I do the same thing. When I get angry, and I mean really angry, I lose rational thought and feel no pain. I have only gotten really angry, twice in my life: Those two times my dog was attacked. The second attack on my dog resulted in trading punches with three homeless guys and while I was punched at least three times, I didn't feel a single blow. Also, both times these dogs were owned were homeless people.
5. I think this may be the new norm in the Pearl District and Downtown Portland. If this is so, there will be a lot more of these types of confrontations, and innocent people may be harmed. It seems that this agglomeration is at least partly the result of about a half-dozen (or more) concentrated services and housing for the homeless, all within 8 blocks of each other, in my neighborhood. There is one nearby sidewalk that has been completely taken over and impassable, by encampments and a dozen stolen bicycles, and it's a place where Grimm has filmed multiple times. Do you want to know where?