Last week, I was squatting with a friend who had just moved into a town house on Harvard Street NW when he got a special “welcome to the neighborhood” surprise. One evening, he stepped out for a late-night caffeine and nicotine run at the 7-Eleven on 14th Street and Columbia Road NW—-and came back soaked in his own blood.

Apparently, after getting the coke and the Camels, a group of preteen girls down the block asked him for a buck. When he apologized and kept walking, they palmed a bottle from the street and rocketed it straight to the back of his head.

But as if a nasty head wound, a freshly crimson T-shirt, and the embarrassment of being roughed up by a bunch of girls wasn’t enough excitement for one night, my friend then got what was really coming to him: EMT sass.

As it turns out, a triple shooting had occurred a few blocks away around the same time. So when the ambulance came to send my friend out for a quick head-staple, the EMTs weren’t too happy to be dealing with such a low-level injury.

As my friend described it, they “treated me like they were pissed I didn’t get shot.”

Now, at least, my friend is starting to get a feel for his new neighborhood. The very next day, walking down Harvard, the bottle-chucking girls yelled out at him for a cigarette. He shook his stapled head and kept on walking.