Publicly mocked yesterday

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I was walking across Victoria station yesterday on my way home from a wedding. I noticed there were a lot of guys around in fancy dress - I don't know if it was a stag night crowd, or a football crowd or one of those team treasure hunt things they do. One of them caught sight of me and began pointing at me and absolutely screaming with laughter. He kept pointing at my face, his finger no more than 6 inches from my face. He kept this up so I shouted at him "Yeah, f**k you too" and prepared to walk on. He had 5 or 6 mates with him and they all stopped and lined up, all grinning and all obviously ready to make something of this. I carried on walking and got my train.

Does this happen to most people? How do you feel afterwards? I felt absolutely terrible. The pain in my head was absolutely appalling. I have always been hung up about my appearance and things like this re-enforce my feelings that I am a freak. It was the sheer joy on the guy's face and on the faces of his friends that they had found such a perfect victim. There was absolutely no consideration that I was a person whose feelings they might hurt or who might retaliate; I was a just a thing for them to get a few cheap laughs out of.

Perhaps the worst aspect of this is that the episode will now be locked in my mind for ever. I can remember episodes like this from decades ago. The memory of the wedding I went to is now poisoned and dulled by this episode.

I don't know exactly what set the guy off. I wear some quite distinctive retro round glasses and I suspect it was those and my looks generally. I don't think it was my body language - I was walking purposefully with my head up. Did I do wrong buying the glasses? (most people I've met have said they liked them). Events like this make me doubt every single thing about myself.

Did I handle the incident correctly? Does anybody know how to make things like this just hurt less?

I would have shot all six of the twats for implied threats. Hard to laugh in a casket.

you handled it fine. sorry they were such creeps.

I had a similar experience few years ago when two guys made fun of my shorts, it did felt pretty bad. Well It's still better than if someone makes fun of you because the way you walk or your posture, you can always change your appearance. Most important thing is to like yourself, if you walk with sad face you will look much less confident and become an easier targer for bullies.

That's awful. Sorry you had to experience that.

Your glasses sound really cool and I imagine they look really good on you. Those guys sound like jerks. Had they been drinking? That generally amplifies people's most awful traits. I'm so sorry you had to go through such an awful experience. I know what you mean about a hurtful incident staying with you, that happens to me too. The incident says a lot more about them and the sort of insensitive creeps they behave as than you.

Chances are that you won't have been the only person that was on the receiving end of the bunch of ignorant bullying ar*eholes that evening. Now I am genuinely not trying to minimise how you were left feeling, just to try and and say that you should try to keep in mind that you did nothing to deserve that type of treatment and to try and let it go. I know how hard that can be, you sound very similar to me in that respect, but maybe you could think about the good time you had at the wedding and then how you perfectly handled a bunch of lowlife losers who don't have your courage and style! You came out of that with the moral and personal high ground and you should be proud of how you dealt with them!

p.s. I LOVE the type of glasses you describe and am actually quite jealous!

I imagine it was something to do with your general look as you guessed. I think you handled it okay. Sorry you experienced that. Like someone else suggested they were probably drunk and looking to put people down and even start some trouble. Even though I'm fairly harmless I consider myself lucky that I'm about 6ft tall and look to be in okay shape. Experience matters more than size in a fight but most bullies are hopeless cowards and so I don't really have to put up with such open insults. I think people more often mistake me for being stupid and prefer to be more subtle. That's just fine by me. If people have to talk behind your back it's because they aren't man enough to do it in front of you.

How many other people did you walk past on that day? I'm guessing it was more than 6 and none of those other people pointed,laughed or made a fuss about your appearance did they? But 6 guys in fancy dress did and you think theres some reason for that beyond that those guys were probably drunk,definitely out of order and merely showing themselves up as utter jerks? I'm familiar with idiot boys like this and they WILL do things like pointing and laughing at a random stranger just to confuse and unsettle them and leave them wondering whats wrong with their appearance. Its a pointless and cruel "game" that they play to make it appear as if theyre having more fun and being more "wild" than they actually are. If it hadnt been you walking past at that point theyd have picked on some other person, because everyone has something that can be picked out and laughed at if you're a jerk looking for it.

You cant forget incidents like this but you can rewrite the narrative that goes with the memory, like Davvo says. You had a bad encounter on your way home from the wedding, but you handled it and continued on your way. Focus on that part of "I handled it" everytime the memory starts intruding and before long the memory will have lost its negative power and will turn into a positive memory of you being strong, capable and awesome.

Wow. That's really nasty of them. How old were those guys? Five? And then they say Aspies are the ones who are immature and lack all these social rules. Well I know that I would never, ever do a thing like that to someone, even if I was with a group of friends. Even if I did have a problem with somebody's appearance or something (which I don't usually) I wouldn't behave like that! I would wait 'til you have gone by then whispered to my friends ''did you see what that person was wearing/doing?'' and we might have a little laugh or whatever if it was that funny to us, and then move on, but not let the person know that we were taking the piss. But I wouldn't even do that because it's not very nice. I was always taught never to point and laugh at people, as it is considered childish and rude. I thought NT people would know better, or were those guys high on drugs or something?

I know I have had random people laugh at me before, but if somebody pointed their finger right in my face and laughed out loud, I think I would be so weirded out that I might consider calling the ambulance to take them away. I'm sure if other people see this incident, they would laugh at those guys, and hopefully pity them for acting so nasty like that around you when you're just minding your own business being as normal as the next person.

Sorry, I just feel angry that people would do that to you. I hope in a few years time somebody would get the ''leader'' when he's on his own and point and laugh at him in his face and see how it leaves him feeling. I bet he wouldn't like it. And they say NTs have empathy??

Thank you so much to everyone for responding, It means a great deal to me. It helps me a bit to be able to simply post about experiences like this and it helps me a lot more to have understanding people respond. It helps get the "poison" out of my system.

I know that if I were to tell most people I know in real life about this experience they would also laugh nearly as hard as the guy on Victoria. I don't quite why they do this: either they think that what happened is so trivial that I shouldn't be at all upset by it. Perhaps they think that I did something foolish to warrant the insult and deserve everything I got. Or perhaps they think at as I am such a big guy I am pathetic for not pulverising all six of them and they's laughing because I am such a weed. I really don't know,

The experience dragged me right back to being at school again and that was pure hell. It's pathetic really when you consider my age now how easily that can happen. My experience from those days was that everyone around would immediately side with the person throwing the insult a so that they didn't get any coming their way.

In answer to Joe90s question, the guys were at least 25, maybe older. It would be more tolerable if they were about 14. It is quite possible that the guy was drunk and/or stoned.

I will try hard, as several posters have suggested, to stamp out the memory of the bad part of the day and hang onto the good part. It doesn't come easily to me though.

Again, thanks everyone.

I would try not to take it personally. Sometimes people just try to get a reaction out of other people. It might have had nothing to do with you and they were just entertaining each other and being inconsiderate jerks.

Though I haven't had people come up to my face and point I've had groups of people that seem to get a lot of joy out of making me uncomfortable and they laugh about it. Maybe most people experience this at some point but dismiss it as something being wrong with the group who are laughing. Maybe we are a bit more sensitive to this, feeling like outsiders, and simply interpret the situation differently.

Maybe it was something strange, like toilet paper sticking out of your shoe and you just never realized it. I wouldn't take it to mean that you are so bizarre you can't walk down the street without making children cry. Haha, the other day I had some bags stuck in my pants and trailing behind me like bridal gown. I did notice people looking, but had no idea until I got to work and my coworker called me over. I can't figure it out because I rode my bike to work, how in the heck could I not have known? Anyway, maybe it was something like that.

Sometimes groups of people, especially young people,will gather, and for some strange reason, get entertainment about finding something to laugh at about most any person who walks by. This is fairly common. And wrong. And probably doesn't have anything to do with you at all. Really. I wish I could make you feel better.

Sometimes groups of people, especially young people,will gather, and for some strange reason, get entertainment about finding something to laugh at about most any person who walks by. This is fairly common. And wrong. And probably doesn't have anything to do with you at all. Really. I wish I could make you feel better.

As I have grown older I have generally let it slide off of me and do my best to NOT let them know it bothered me. Yes it still happens from time to time and it is even worse when it is kids that do it to an adult my age. But being an adult, I am better able to control myself in such situations.

Now put a young kid in that position pre-teen and early to mid-teens having this happen all the time. Their mental development hasn't reached the maturity level of an adult yet. The effects on the young are so much more worse as they haven't learned coping mechanisms yet. And then society wonders why after countless years these same poor individuals lose it and decide to shoot a school full of kids in retaliation. I am NOT in ANY way defending such responses. But those of us on the spectrum can relate and think back on how it felt. When I was a young teen I used to plot my revenge and think of ways of torturing and killing these creeps! But I knew it was wrong so I let go of it. Some can't and sadly we see the end result these days.

The schools pretty much say they address bullying, but we know it isn't true. In their own way they think they are. But when you get responses from school officials as in the case of the young lad who had a "My Little Pony" lunchbox they said he couldn't carry it anymore. It and the child bringing it in were the cause of this from this implication. So what is a child to do confronted by this senseless hate and bullying. In my mind it is a miracle that many more school shooting don't take place. I think it speaks volumes on how much those of us on the spectrum hate drama and violence.