AIBU to think this lady was nuts? Share your WTF interactions with strangers here

I was offered a seat on the tube and gladly took it. It was only a few hours later it occurred to me he possibly offered it to me because he thought I was pregnant.

I don’t know why but I just thought he was being chivalrous and I happily sat down 😂 the funny thing is he had something to his friends a few minutes earlier and I thought they had all looked at me and said something (all in their own language) .

I now think they were trying to figure out if I was fat or pregnant 😆

I had a man, about 40 years old, randomly and aggressively accuse me of insulting him in the street, when I'd made a totally innocuous remark to my husband who was with me, something about the weather, that (however often I replayed it in my head) sounded absolutely nothing like what he'd accused me of saying.

Even more bizarrely, the insult he'd accused me of very obviously didn't apply to him - think calling him a 'fatty' when he was a normal size (I won't repeat what he actually accused me of saying because it was a highly offensive and discriminatory word).

I was blindsided and just kept repeating what I'd actually said (the remark sounding more and more banal each time) and eventually he told me to fuck off and walked away.

I still can't make any sense of it. I'm in my 50s and DH (slightly built) in his 60s, so not the sort of people you'd expect a younger bloke to pick a fight with to prove he was hard or whatever. He didn't show obvious signs of being drunk or unwell. I was pretty shaken and it's put me off going back to the place where it happened.

Oh well yeah that’s interesting she didn’t understand your husband when his accent is more similar to hers! 😆

I do sometimes have difficulty with some British accents unfortunately

Accents can make a difference to be fair! I understand my mums native language, although I can’t speak it very well. When I’m over in that country and certain cousins with a different accent speak the same language I don’t understand a word so they need to switch to English for me 😂 but I understand it perfectly when my aunties and uncles speak it.

I’m Scottish but have travelled so much including attending an English uni when I was younger, that I am used to slowing down my accent so that most people (who understand English ) can still understand me. But if I have a long chat with another Scottish person my accent reverts back to being really strong for a while.

I couldn’t understand well enough to carry on a conversation, so I had to awkwardly leave. Maybe it was Newcastle?

If it was Newcastle I wouldn’t be surprised - that’s the “Jordie” accent I was referring to in my previous post. People from Newcastle are known as “Jordies”.

Ugh this has happened to me so many times, it’s horrible, I’m a couple of stone overweight but, it’s just the way my weight sits on my stomach. I’ve had people offer me their seat on the tube before, it’s mortifying!

I was at a wedding and chatting to a friend’s new girlfriend and she started asking me about my plans for when my baby is due, I was like errr, there is no baby!

Then a neighbour caught me to ask a question about some plants whilst I carrying shopping into my house and said “Ah, I can see you’re busy with a little one on the way, I’ll come back another time”. Again, not pregnant. Both those instances were just so embarrassing.

I struggle to lose weight as it is, hard as I try, now I’ve just resorted to making people as uncomfortable as they’ve made me, I just look them dead in the eye and say “I’m not pregnant, I’m just fat, thanks for noticing”

I worked in a travel agency and this client tried to speak to me in a very thick British accent which I just could not understand. I kept asking him: Sorry, could you say that again. He asked me if I was stupid. I couldn't say it is the way you speak. I just don't understand your dialect.

I'd have loved that! I would say, ooOOOoo really!? please share!

Oooh I’ve got one!

Walking behind two women out of the toilets in a pub, one of them had her skirt tucked up in her knickers so of course I quietly told her (I’d want to know!), nobody else around apart from the other woman she was with so nobody to embarrass her in front of. The other woman, who I presume was her Mum, bellowed at me for ‘staring at a teenager’s arse’

Thanks. TBH my mother had a severely abusive upbringing that involved familial sexual abuse so her abilities to respond to things was and is flawed.

I am 51 now and she is 75 and she still prioritises her 'family' (abusers) over anything else. I think of as an abused puppy trying to curry favour from her abusers. I don't understand it, and it is why I have refused to see my various aunts and uncles now for more than a decade.

I live in a farming area and you've just reminded me that what pregnant with my first my GP warned me to stay away from sheep - now I know why!

So sorry you had to go through not only the trauma of him doing that to you, but also the frankly insane reaction by your mother!
It's almost like some people can't comprehend that bad stuff does happen, and it isn't some innocent bloke making a peeing comment just because they've never had a bad experience!

The house viewer's definition, of a messy cupboard, is the only one I've heard of!

I would Google the other but suspect I might regret that.

A man at work (big corporate office) approached me in the kitchen area and asked me if I’d ever worked in retail. I explained I used to do women’s makeovers in the Body Shop in the early 90s (Barbara Daly Colourings), but that it was unlikely he was ever one of my customers.

He then asked me if I’d ever worked in Safeway, and when I said ‘no’ he narrowed his eyes at me and said “you’ve never worked in Safeway?!” like I was lying. Then he shook his head and walked off.

So many questions, but mainly, why would someone lie about working/not working in Safeway? (which I’d forgotten existed)

I also forgot - southern Ireland this summer in a small coastal village. Nice beach across the road from houses, 8am joggers and couple of coffee-on-the-beach goers and (me) a cycle tourist wondering if this is a breakfast spot.
Man just walks out one of the houses, past me and the other beach couple and down to the water for a swim. The next jogger laughs as she goes by and said 'he does that most days'....
Dude was butt naked.

My husband literally does this to people whenever he sees anything that looks remotely like a herb. He’s in his 50s though.

@Thurien I’m singing songs from The Herbs now 😬

The much bigger risk is sheep.

City dwellers might not know this (its probably more common knowledge among us rural farm types) but Sheep can spread Chlamydia Abortus to humans. In most humans it will at worst cause flu like symptoms for a few days but as per the name in pregnant woman it will be much more serious illness and fatal to the fetus.

It causes on average 1-5 pregnancies losses per year in the UK so there's usually signs at farms, petting zoos and on sheep fields during breeding season warning pregnant woman to stay away from the sheep.

same non-flute playing baby 😁😍😂

Try cycling. There are weekly WTF interactions with a small minority of drivers!
In the last month I had a car pull alongside in a queue of traffic and calmly tell me to get off the road as I "don't pay road tax".
The month before that a classic overtake to immediately brake and 'left hook' into a parking space.
And lets not get onto 6 months ago the chap who thought driving into a group of kids on bikes was acceptable as he 'was in a car' and they were 'on the road in front of me'....

To be fair to her, that is an early definition of a glory hole:

informal a room, cupboard, or other storage space that contains an untidy and miscellaneous collection of objects

Although it is not definition that springs to mind these days....

Oh - and re. the fish in the foof - a Theatre sister I worked with told me about a case she remembered where the lady was getting recurrent UTIs, so had a cystoscopy which revealed a complete fish skeleton in her bladder!

Exactly. A grown adult ranting about it. He called it “bubble juice”. It didn’t even pop on him, but near him. And if it had, what harm? It was bizarre. I have been sure to keep my bubbles in my own air space ever since!

I'm loving all the Herbs references on here - I grew up watching The Herbs, Trumpton and Camberwick Green, so I am enjoying a lovely nostalgia-fest.

I can't think of any experiences I've had, that would fit here - but I do have one from a friend. She was walking round the shopping centre with her twin babies, one boy and one girl, in their buggy, when an elderly lady came up to coo over them. "Ooooh - are they twins?" - "Yes" said my friend. "A boy and a girl?", "Yes". "Hmm - are they identical?" My friend - <<baffled>>

Very heavily pregnant in a Butchers shop, got to the front and all the lads behind the counter started dancing about and singing "We know what you've been doing" WTF