My first concern upon finding out that one of my daughters had been punched in the chest by a strange man in Eugene was for her safety.

She was OK — physically, anyway — which led to my second reaction: an immediate and profound sadness that, for her, the veil of safety in the world had been lifted.

At least a sucker punch in the chest would begin to feel better.

It happened a week before Halloween, about 11:30 p.m. She’d had a late shift at her catering job, and a coworker walked her to within two blocks of her downtown apartment building. After she walked alone for a bit, a man approached on the sidewalk ahead. She tried to move out of his way. When she zigged, he veered to stay in her path. She wasn’t sure if they were both being awkward or if it was intentional. Once they were upon each other, she didn’t have much room to pass, so she politely apologized, even though she’d literally done nothing but be considerate.

“Oh, sorry,” she said, another innocent woman being accommodating and polite to a guy as he moved through the world with impunity.

“You better be sorry,” he said, and punched her.

Shocked, scared, out of sorts, her instinct was to keep walking. She called a friend on her phone for the remainder of the walk home and didn’t look back. Luckily, he didn’t follow or escalate it further. She was fairly certain he’d thrown in a little misogynist expletive, but she was so shaken around midnight that she couldn’t be sure.

She declined to report it to the police, but she did buy pepper spray the next day, as did the friend with whom she went shopping.

Still, in that situation, she wasn’t sure she’d have had the foresight, the sense of impending danger, to use it. No one expects to be punched by a person approaching them on a sidewalk, I hope.

Losing one’s sense of feeling safe — or realizing just how vulnerable you are — happens to everyone at some point. Still, I don’t wish it on anyone.

As if just being alive isn’t filled with potential dangers such as a sinkhole opening under your feet, encountering a great white shark while snorkeling, choking on a pretzel while snacking alone or swimming in warm waters harboring that brain-eating bacteria isn’t enough, there are also just angry, potentially violent people.

There’s also the machines we’ve built: That’s how I lost my sense of feeling safe most of the time, by cracking a windshield with my forehead as I rode in the passenger seat of a friend’s light pickup truck at 17 when he rear-ended the vehicle ahead of us.

Airbags were not yet a thing, and no, I didn’t have my seatbelt on. At the hospital, Rick hugged me and sobbed, tearing my forehead open as I waited stitches. He was beside himself because he now carried the weight of what could’ve happened — what he could have done — to his friends.

As for me, safety’s veil lifting showed me that cars weren’t remotely as safe as I’d always believed them, no matter who’s behind the wheel. Later, at home, I cried myself to sleep with the worst headache of my life.

I had to be concussed, but no one mentioned that in 1985.

But I started using my seatbelt — and nagging my parents to do the same. (Where did you think I’d inherited my seatbelt apathy?)

In a perfect world, my wife and I could skate by knowing we brought up our daughters in a time and place that they’re safe.

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In this real one, I know we’ve brought them up in a world with an undercurrent of potential violence and danger.

In August, my colleagues reported on the ongoing effects of the 2022 shooting at the east Bend Safeway, in which a gunman killed two before taking his own life.

I know visiting Smith Rock State Park, where a man allegedly planned to shoot at climbers this month, will never feel the same for many of us.

On Monday, I called my daughter to talk about how she was feeling since almost a week had passed. That it could have been worse, that he could have continued to strike her or done something more severe, is “what really freaks me out,” she said.

Though now armed with pepper spray, she’s still not convinced she’d have used it in last week’s incident. “It happened so fast. I don’t think I would’ve had time to react,” she said.

“Do you want to hear a funny detail?” she asked. “I’m not sure if I remember it or if I was in a state of delirium, but it looked like they were only wearing underwear.”

“It looked like they were only wearing underwear?” I said.

“It looked like they were wearing booty shorts,” she said, her voice brightening.

At this, we both laughed. It’s nice to hear your kid’s laughter again after something scary and safety-threatening.

And as a defense against the indignities of modern life, I have to say, laughter is pretty effective.