Bizarre public encounter

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That sounds very mean. He sounded so polite at first. In general if you are closest to him, or the only one around, just assume it's you he's talking to. If you are unsure you can ask. That is what I do.

I'm putting my vote in with drunk. I've seen that kind of "polite-to-hostile in 60 seconds" reaction before in people who are "mean" drunks. Plus the fact that he did it when you had your kid with you, and the presence of a kid usually puts the brakes on people's public hostility but those brakes get taken off with alcohol.

I don't think you overreacted. I'm going to go out on a limb even though I know nothing about either you or your wife. But I'm guessing she said that out of fear. Not because you overreacted. Because you didn't. But because you had your son with you and her number one fear is that he will be hurt. Which he might have been if that guy had rushed you after you gave him the finger. He sounds to me like the sort of person most likely to rush somebody who gives him the finger. He didn't. But I bet that flashed through your wife's mind.

I get stuff like that. Like some guy once started yelling at me when I answered my phone while walking through a park, "mobiles give you cancer!"

Or an older guy would start talking to me asking if I was feeling too hot because of wearing my Doc Martens... Well if I'm wearing them and have not changed them for something else, that's possibly a no.

And also I was coming back from the shop at night, ignored a group of adolescent boys/young men scattered across my path (just walked through without looking at any of them because I didn't want any trouble) and had one of them yell after me, "take your headphones out and pay attention!" Can anybody explain why he would demand that?

Yes, it gets to me how some NT's make your business their own and get angry when you keep doing your thing. What was it to him anyway?

Well, he (my son) was in a carrier on my back. It's actually hard to see that I am carrying a baby. From the front it just looks like I have these straps going across my body in a weird way. So maybe he (the man) thought I had some mental issues just by the way I looked. Who knows?


Could be, but I doubt it. Even though she wasn't there, I'm pretty sure that our son didn't factor into her reasoning.

Part of the other reason I don't assume people are talking to me (even if I'm pretty sure they are) is because of the big city mentality. As soon as you acknowledge some random guy talking at you, he will probably hit you up for money. And you can't just walk away without saying something at that point. It's better to just keep walking and ignore him.

Granted, this event occurred in the suburbs, and I think people expect you to be friendlier out here. If anything, though, I am overall less friendly to random people out here. I hate to stereotype suburbanites, but generally speaking I am more likely to have less in common with the average suburbanite than I am to have with the average city dweller.

This one is a little different more I think about it because it was like he was trying to help and then got really rude when you didn't listen to him. Was he even right about the fair?

Anyway, most of my similar encounters are pretty rude from the get go. There have been times where it took me a minute to realize they are being rude, like the guy asking me if my house is so dirty that I can wash it with my shoe because I had propped my foot on the edge of a drink tray thing at a fast food restaurant so I wouldn't drop my two year old. My sister once at a walmart was walking back to her car with her 2 boys one of which was crying very loud because he didn't want to leave Walmart, and some ugly woman told her she should keep her legs closed in the future. When I was in Wyoming, I was pulling into a parking spot and a woman walked out in front of me, so I braked and waited for her to walk out of my way before parking, and she told me to learn how to drive with a few choice words.

Sometimes I kinda ask for it, like one day I was complaining to myself (well my one year old in the cart) about the average IQ being 70 in this town I was living in, and some local did take offense to it and it started a verbal argument in a grocery store parking lot. In cases like that, I kinda feel like if I have to deal with ignorance like that then I should be granted the right to complain about it, but nobody else seems to agree with me on that one.

I don't think it's an Aspie NT thing. Some people are really just jerks. I can kinda see how they get that way at some point. I have a weird thing about my feet. I don't like to feel anything on the bottom of my feet, and with that comes the same concept with the bottom of my shoes. Like an OCD thing almost. So when I step in gum, it drives me nuts that it's there. I'm so almost tempted when I see someone throw their gum on the ground to pick it back up and put it back into their mouths (adults only). But in all fairness, I'm sure I've thrown my gum on the ground a few times in this life (can't remember my childhood well enough to know for sure). There are other things that bother me enough to say something like people letting their dogs poop where children play. But the examples I see here (like the OP, the ones I gave, and activebutodd's examples) have no logical value of the dog poop or gum throwers, but maybe it does and I'm just not seeing it. Like maybe the guy in the OP told 10 people that and they all ignored him and he was just fed up with it.

Tantybi, I agree it's not specifically an AS / NT thing. However I do believe my initial response to not even provide him with an acknowledgment that I heard him was an AS "shutdown" trait that people who are more NT would not have done.

He was the one who overreacted, not you. Even if he did think you were somewhat rude not replying, is that a legitimate reason to begin screaming at a stranger in the street?

I wonder if he had also considered the possibility that you actually might have been hearing impaired before he insulted you? It's not uncommon for people to have moderate hearing difficulties that don't require them to be wearing a visible aid, but could mean they would not necessarily catch the words of someone passing them in a street filled with other sounds. I would suggest to anyone who flies into a rage because someone has 'ignored' them that they think about that first!

As subliculous said, a lot of (NT?) people do seem to be take the idea of someone not paying attention to them as an enormous insult, and can become quite disproportionately angry. I've always been unable to work out why such a thing as a complete stranger not acknowledging them should often provoke such swift anger and abuse. Is it simply ego, or is it more than that? Is it that the social drive means that they do largely form their identity and 'place' themselves in the world by how others see them, so to totally ignore them is to, effectively, make them disappear?

Very true. I just kinda did that today even. I was at a community gathering at the park and ran into my old guidance counselor from high school. I saw him probably 5 times and made eye contact all 5 times before I actually thought to say hi. It's like I assumed he didn't want to talk to me. It's funny because even though I'm delayed at the thought of starting the conversation and saying hi, I'm still generally the first person to do that. Like in that example, my guidance counselor had 5 opportunities to say hi first. More often than not, it's the Aspergers person who starts the, "Oh hi, how have you been doing?" So it's common for NT's to also not verbally acknowledge someone, but I think they do acknowledge body language. But the upside is that we have more control on it. Like AS can decide to acknowledge with eye contact if we want to, but NT's would have a very hard time deciding consciously to not acknowledge someone.