So Forbes.com has named Minneapolis-St.Paul-Bloomington as America’s safest city.

Never mind that I just rattled off three cities. (Does this mean we’re no longer the “Twin Cities”? I hope we’re not going to change our tagline. “The Triplet Cities of Minneapolis, St. Paul and Bloomington” just doesn’t have the same ring.)

Anyway, the folks at Forbes drew this conclusion about the cities-formerly-known-as-twins by compiling data on violent crime, workplace fatalities, traffic deaths, and risk of natural disaster. Apparently tornadoes, ice storms, blizzards, lightning, flash floods and hail don’t rate very high on the disaster-o-meter.

All kidding aside, it’s ironic that our safety supremacy should be trumpeted today. Just this morning, Esteban warned me to be careful when getting out of my car in the alley, because of a recent string of muggings in our neighborhood. We had our car broken into last year, and a couple of months ago someone stabbed our garage door.

None of these facts make me feel “unsafe,” per se. But contrasting my own experiences with Forbes’ utopian vision is an excellent reminder that sometimes the statistics don’t tell the whole story.