More and more, street gangs are preying on runners because they’ve decimated their traditional targets, door-to-door salesmen and proselytizers.

A new and effective strategy had been developed for runners passing through gang-infested neighborhoods. It features a formation called the attack wedge. It brushes gang members aside like a broom dispatching dirt.

When the attack wedge advances, the point breaks up the gang, and the flanks push them aside to create a clear path. The only apparent weakness is assaults from the rear, however – knock, knock! – runners are fast! Gang members can’t begin to approach from the rear with their baggy pants halfway down their legs.

The daunting attack wedge repels gangs in the toughest neighborhoods.

The group above agreed to demonstrate the attack wedge. Having a scowl or tough-guy expression is very important. However, as adept as they are doing the wedge, on this morning all they wanted to do was play around.

Wayne, the leader in red, kept urging everyone to follow him because he was the magical Pied Piper. Whatever. Stephanie, wearing the hat and the only runner out of position told me she knows more about attack wedges than me and wasn’t moving.

Veronica, dressed in black and wearing headphones, wouldn’t stop playing her music and couldn’t hear directions. When she finally took them off, the music was blasting and everyone started dancing. It took twenty minutes to get them to stop and get back in formation.

Jill, to the right of Wayne and wearing the white top, is a teacher and kept giving everyone a gold star for the awesome job they were doing. But no one was doing an awesome job. No one at all! Oh, I was so very extremely intensely angry. I had to go for a long drive afterward. I was still in a rage by evening time and had to make an after-hours appointment with my anger management counselor.