Yesterday afternoon, I almost got in a fight with a bus driver. It wasn’t an MTA bus driver, but rather the driver of one of the big blue double-decker tour buses, the kind that loop out-of-town visitors past the city’s landmark.

The driver had stopped at a red light, then suddenly lurched forward into the crosswalk, almost killing a group of children crossing the street a few steps ahead of me. So, like any good New Yorker, I banged the bus’ front window with my fist, told the driver he was a fucking moron and that he’d almost killed the kids, and suggested he get his head out of his ass to watch where he was going.

This, apparently, didn’t sit well with the fellow. But as he was well strapped into his seat, I was two-thirds the way down the block before he managed to stick his head out the door to curse me in response.

Fortunately, I was at that point on my way back from brunch with Jess and her visiting sister Nina, and Jess managed to restrain me from returning to take up the driver’s stream of street-fight challenges. Still, I suspect it was largely Nina who gets the credit for defusing the fight. Because later that afternoon, once Nina had boarded the Amtrak back home to Boston, some giant fat lady shoved Jess on the sidewalk in front of a store, and it was all I could do to restrain her from a similar throw-down.

We’re small. But we’re feisty.