My ass, still on the line

By 9:30, the night of the Times Square scare, things were truly tense. Theater-goers were trapped in the snarl and confusion. People could not reach their cars, hotels or other destinations.
New York's Finest, surprisingly, were acting like perfect assholes, herding people around in a most offensive manner - barking orders and exacerbating the unpleasantness.
The corn-fed tourists were in a tizzy; wide-eyed, intimidated, they saw their dream-trip to the Big Apple morph into a nightmare.
The flash of my camera always alarms people in crowds. It's a type of photography I've become fond of. But this was gold! The subjects were already wary, scared, defensive - their reflexes primed for disaster.
My Canon emits some preparatory flashes in order to focus. This consists of a barrage of blinding pops of light. By the time the shutter opens, an unprepared person in the line of fire feels as if assaulted by a photon machine gun. And the second and third shots - the "deer-in-the-headlights" ones - produce the most satisfying results.
Luckily, so preoccupied am I with the logistics of shooting, I'm largely unaware of the danger. This I see later, when editing the photos. I do, though, catch glimpses of contorted faces, and attack or defense positions. But before they can affect my nerve, I've marauded on down the sidewalk, flashing away at fresh prey.
So far, nothing bad has happened to me, though I've taken thousands of photos under these conditions.
These are two delightful reactions to my full frontal assault.