I just do it from a distance.

check your back seat and floor before you get into your car.

I think I learned that from spy or horror flicks. Or those gawdawful urban legends.

And lock your doors as soon as you get in.

And under the car, as you approach it.

You know, if I was watching a woman approaching her car, and trying do work out when to jump her -- this might be when. How do you do this without compromising your balance and increasing your dead space?

My weird little Tardis car sits up higher off the ground than other compact cars and, actually, most sedans. So I don't have to do contortions; just eyeball it carefully.

And under the car, as you approach it.

This too. I didn't post it originally because I didn't want to sound (more) paranoid.

Steph and Kristin are me.

If I can get a long view of the car as I approach, I do it that way. I'm not stopping to bend down and look. My car's low to the ground anyway. Anybody under there will lose skin when I leave. Also, my car has good glass area, and I can sweep the backseat and floor with a glance as I unlock and get in. No extra time, no loitering, no hesitating.

Placing an Amazon order -- anyone want the Love Shared for Pratchett's A Hat Full of Sky, Joni Mitchell's Blue, the Farscape series soundtrack, Queen Latifah's Dana Owens Album, or Yo-Yo Ma Plays Enrico Morricone? Offer expires at... let's say 8:30 EST (5:30 board time). Post here if your email address is in your profile, or email me at my profile address.

Yep.

I have to say, though, that most of the major harassment issues I've had have been at social/public gatherings (parties, bars, etc) and have resulted in being felt up, pushed against a wall, and other general nastiness.

The walking-to-car thing is just a habit. The "come to close to me and you get a spiked heel in your eye" thing at bars is a learned behavior.

it's not that I'm looking to not get mugged on the way to my car, it's that I'm looking to not be startled by a mugger on the way to my car.

And this is what makes you our ita.

Me, I try to park under a light. I've never checked the trunk and back seat, although God knows I should. (Is this still an issue if you lock your car?) I keep meaning to take Model Mugging and I really, really should; somebody on my LJ friendslist teaches it.

Holy crap, Sophia. That's some family...

The funny thing was I was just reminsicing to a friend how this family had the first VCR I ever sae. In the parents bedroom. And it had only 3 movies Superman 1, II and III. And all of the sudden I realized that they probably had other, more "adult" films, or they would have put the VCR in the family room and not had us all over their bedroom to watch Superman! They were also what I would have considered then to be REALLY rich, but I think now they were perhaps only upper middle class.

Re: the weirdly sexulized place of childhood:

a) This girl from the wrong side of the tracks sort of, now that I think of it, pretty much showed/taught me hw to masturbate on our front lawn when I was about 7. My mother shortly therafter forbade me to play with her. But I didn;t even realize it was sexual I just knew it felt good.

b) I wish I knew what play this was from, but once my acting teacher performed a sample monologue for us about a little girl learning that it felt good to rub up against something, an it to really captured the weird seaual yet non-secual vibe of childhood.

c) sometimes I think that when when become parents they forget this sort of innocent, oddly sexual pleasure, and forget being in 6th grade wondering if people have had sex(and I am not so young). Not everyone, surely, as DavidS pointed the vibe out. But, as my office runs a camp for 6th - 8th grades, I am often surprised at how innocent people think this age to be. We are supposed to be running a 2 week long overnight camp for 6th - 12th graders on a college campus, and I just think "We better keep these kids VERY busy!"

You know, if I was watching a woman approaching her car, and trying do work out when to jump her -- this might be when.

Now I'm entertaining myself with mental images of ita pouncing on people, flying out of nowhere like a ninja.

My parking garage beckons.

I have to say, though, that most of the major harassment issues I've had have been at social/public gatherings (parties, bars, etc) and have resulted in being felt up, pushed against a wall, and other general nastiness.

Walking through crowded spaces at game conventions (when I was regularly being sent to them by the game company I worked for) were the worst. I started refusing to leave the booth unless I had someone else walk with me.