All good things begin in a certain way. I hope that this is one of them.
I also hope that this will be the first of many suggested experiments. And I dedicate this and future experiments to the city of Toronto: I love you so much, my feet hurt.
There are urges some have that others consider to be odd. Say when you’re having a conversation with a person who is holding a glass of water and for no particular reason you want to take the glass of water and empty the contents on their face. The specific technique of the emptying process is left to your imagination (use it well). Or in another scenario you approach two people who are engaged in a conversation, each with a glass of water in their hands, and you walk up to the two, take both glasses and empty them on their respective faces. Then you proceed to walk away in a nonchalant manner as if something routine has happened.
A similar urge is the origins of the experiment that follows. The scene is set in a subway station where you find a staircase adjacent to an escalator. You are going up the escalator and the target is climbing up the stairs. When you approach the target you take their hat and you fling it in the reverse direction (down the stairs). You then proceed to scurry up the escalator and, if possible, on to a safe hiding location. An oncoming train would be perfect.
The test we are trying to conduct here is whether the target will go after their hat or whether they will chase you down in order to beat you to a pulp.
The experiment works best when the hat is a fedora as it adds a certain poetic sense to the hat toss. Otherwise a baseball cap or some other head gear will do just fine. Also try and situate it so that the staircase is busy such that it makes chasing you all that more inconvenient. Don’t always do this — variety is best — collect as many data points as you can.
This experiment is by no means complete or perfect. If you have any ways to improve it, please do so.
