Passing judgment just isn't my thing. At least, I try not to. I'll leave that for somebody else. Who and what you are boils down like this -- it is up to you. I love the human race and would say most people fit into that category.

I'm also relatively neutral in a lot of ways. That, I think, is a product of my lifestyle as a professional watcher and appreciator. I can be a very flexible and easy-to-get-along-with guy.

Can be. I can be highly skeptical and uneasy as well, depending on my little radar. My intuition. It's a disturbing thing. It's devilishly hard to pin down or describe, but it serves me very well.

Sometimes, it's just a matter of meeting someone and feeling easy about it. You know they're on the same wavelength; there's just no question.

Sometimes, it's a warning.

Two weeks ago Friday, after editing for the paper, I spent the evening getting ready for a house party. It was a going-away shindig for a friend most of us won't see again. Sad but true. He's a Tech graduate headed to China to teach conversational English.

We'd been planning for a week, setting up where and when, and trying to invite a huge throng of people. The guys who owned the place were nervous for their stuff, considering the party would probably be big, and people they didn't know could show up.

I felt some kind of weirdness; I felt it in my bones. A friend brought a couple she barely knew to my place, the plan being we'd all go to the party together.

I saw something funny in the two she brought over. It really struck me as odd they made no effort to introduce themselves. Granted, I could tell they were pretty drunk, and it was early. I just let it slide. I shouldn't have.

I had to run an errand after they got to my apartment and left my friend Jean there with them and said, "Keep an eye on things, man." I could tell he understood.

I gradually put it out of my mind as I boomed down the road to the store, and came back ready to go. We all piled in two cars and headed to the party.

When we got there, I could feel that it was about to take off from the anxiousness in the air. They were waiting for something.

It came about an hour in, after most of the crowd was feeling grand and newcomers were mingling about the house, making it look alive.

Suddenly, there's trouble. The guy throwing the party was brandishing a golf club at my weird couple.

Uh, oh. Who did I bring to this party? I knew it wasn't the guy with the club who'd started all this.

People were demanding to search the girl's purse, and her man was standing between her and a group that was really just flat pissed off.

A close friend's wallet had been stolen from an off-limits room. It didn't have much in it, but this was big.

My internal alarm was going off.

I was really annoyed I hadn't seen it earlier in those two. I must be slipping.

The short and long of it is the two suspect party-goers were booted, and the lost items (it was realized there was more than one) stayed lost. The important thing was that nobody got the business-end of the golf club. Or the knife that the two suspects threatened to bust out; that would have ruined everything.

I was wearing a half-smirk when I heard some pretty loaded people commenting, "Those two just didn't look right."

Nick Todaro is a senior journalism major from Shreveport and serves as a news editor for The Tech Talk. E-mail comments to nst005@latech.edu.