To feel awful about shouting at an older lady

[TheCrossKeys]

I got the bus today with the baby, 6yo, and 4yo. Baby started having a little whinge when we first got on so I gave her a banana out of the shopping bag and she was silent for the rest of the trip, stuffing her face. 4yo and 6yo were chatting quietly but not constantly, I was across the aisle from them and could barely hear them. I am not shy about telling my DC to quiet down when they're being too loud, I will remove them if they don't and they know this as a fact.

When it got close to the stop we needed, 6yo asked me if this was our stop - it's not a route we usually travel so she wasn't familiar with it - I said yes. The older lady (maybe late 60s?) in the seat behind me piped up in a really nasty voice "good, maybe it'll be quiet now". I asked her what she meant and she pointed at the baby and DD and said "I mean the amount of noise from that and that!". I said she was being very rude about young children who had been sitting quietly and minding their own business, other passengers agreed that they were sitting quietly. She then told me "they're a disgrace and so are you". So I lost my temper and told her she was a nasty fucking witch and was sheborn this bitter or did it develop over time. I then lost whatever dignity I had left and (to my absolute shame) told her to go fuck herself.

I am not a horrible person, I try to be kind and I try to give people the benefit of the doubt. I've been having a tough time lately and the DC have been so good during it all, they are not little angels all of the time but they really were being quiet and I simply lost my rag.

We have to use that same route again tomorrow and I'm dreading it in case she's on the bus again.

You were doing just fine until the point you told her to go fuck herself, at which point you lost the moral high ground and gave her the justification to consider you a Disgrace.

I’m sure OP will be losing sleep that random strangers she neither knows nor cares for will judge her moral compass and consider her ‘rough’ or a ‘disgrace’

I'm normally a polite quiet reserved kind of person. I'm not 'rough'. I respect my elders and I teach my kids the same and to respect others in public places.

But I would have lost it like you OP. Referring to my kids as 'that and that!' and being so nasty and vile would cause an eruption of expletives too.

It's all good and well saying we shouldn't, and should take the moral high ground. But when a random stranger behaves in such a shocking way it awakens that protective defensive 'fight' reflex in us and as we can't physically fight it will manifest itself into fighting words.... derogatory swearing

More people than they realise would act in a very similar way, they've just never been in this situation to appreciate that

lol funny enough after reading and commenting on this yesterday my 19 year old daughter called me from the train, she was off back to her home town after visiting me for a week. She was a bit tearful, we miss each other when she's gone, and she's going back to a job she hates etc.

Laden with bags etc she is a nice kid and tries to be pleasant (too much so at times, she's a people pleaser) when an elderly man jabbed her in the leg with his stick and told her to 'move her bag!'. No please, no nothing. She obliged and said sorry. Of course I was furious when she told me. Mumma Bear came to the fore and I said she should have explained how please and thank you worked to him.

She said, despite having witnessed me losing my shit once or twice. 'He was probably having a bad day'. Well I can't argue with that really, and I wasn't there.

However, 20 mins later the phone goes again and she tells me with some amusement that an elderly lady getting off the train had turned to her and told her, loudly enough for stick man to hear 'Don't worry about the grumpy bastard, he probably can't get it up anymore, so uses a stick instead'.

She said she was amused but mortified as lady got off and she was left with stick man glaring at her for next 4 stops lol

I’ve read your post 3 times and can only wish idbe as brave as you to give someone as rude as she was a piece of my mind.

You probably feel bad cos you swore in public. Were I a passenger on the bus I might have raised my eyebrows at the ‘fucks’, but I’d have been applauding you too.

Why do people keep saying that she may have had dementia so OP should have just bitten her tongue? I work in dementia care and I can tell you that if a resident is being rude or vile to somebody, they are called out on it. We don’t tell them to go fuck themselves obviously :) If they have capacity the message will get across at that point in time. If they don’t have capacity, then obviously we deal with it differently, but I don’t think that’s the case here, cos a person with no capacity wouldn’t have been on a bus on their own.
Dementia, arthritic joint pains (wtf?) is not an excuse to be let off for being nasty when it’s totally uncalled for.

Tillytrotter - be grateful you didn't RTFT, as it is depressing beyond belief to see so many responses from people who think the OP's behaviour was anything other than frightful.

No you weren't. You were on a bus. I once made a comment in a theatre when a child about 4-5 was being REALLY loud and distracting and the mother was encouraging it, but this was a BUS! What were your children disrupting?

I think you were absolutely in the right. Dignity is used to suppress people into accepting the heinous behaviour of others by not calling them out on it, allowing the the perpetrators to continue. Think back to when rape victims were encouraged to keep quiet out of 'dignity'. Its the same bullshit, on a lesser scale. Hopefully now this woman will think twice about being a gobshite, especially to a lone woman with small children.

BertrandRussell

"Maybe the woman had a mental health problem or dementia"

Or maybe she was just a rude person. Old people can be rude without having "issues" you know!

Or maybe she had an “issue”. You know nothing more than I do. We know nothing more that the sweaty OP does etc etc

This could go on for days.🙄

sweaty?

Sorry, OP, I know not whether you are sweaty or not. My pred txt seems not to want to give you the benefit of the doubt, however. Lol

You weren't BU at all and I'd have done the same in your situation.

For what it's worth I find children other than my own irritating, I'm not going to lie. But shock, horror - when you're out and about or on public transport then you are going to encounter children! If you never want to see or hear kids then you'd have to stay at home 24/7.

Having a bad day is not an excuse. We all have bad days, being unspeakably rude is still not acceptable.

Twocatsobebaby- try substituting any other group for “oldies” in your post and see how it looks. Quickly, because with a bit of luck it will be deleted for ageism soon.

Hopefully it will Bertrand - I reported it a short while ago. Along with asking MNHQ if they could find some way of addressing this ageist bigotry that is now rife on MN.

I really don't feel comfortable here when everyday I read posts abusing people in my age group, simple because of their age.

The swearing in front of the children wasn't ideal, but aside from that I don't think you were unreasonable. Horrible woman.

I reported it too, there's no excuse for ageism, you should never generalise about any group. We'll all be older one day.

You get rude people in any age group IME.

Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to cause offence at all. Some are lovely. But I live in a retirement area who really pass off others because they've always lived in this area. It's very close knit. They don't like younger people. I mainly serve the elderly at work and some are wonderful. Just because on the bus its a bit difficult with a few people. Not all of them. But all of them I've delt with have been a lot older than myself. I'm generalising which I apologise for.
I've always lived here. So this is the norm for me.

It’s just so depressing. On several counts. The assumption that if you’’re old- which probably means over 60 you can’t just be a rude person, you must have issues. The acceptance that it is ever OK to yell “go fuck yourself” on a bus - whether in front of children. The acceptance that it’s OK to completely lose control of yourself. And the general acceptance that old people are fair game for generalizations, negative stereotyping and abuse on the strength of their age alone.

Twocatsonebaby “oh my god just fucking move" wow you sound horribly unpleasant.

She wouldn't let me get off the bus and I couldn't exactly move back. "excuse me please" whilst my daughter was tipped didn't seem to damn work. She just looked at me and tutted.

The woman was nasty and rude and based on the fact that nobody else had a problem with your dc, I’d say she was spoiling for a verbal scrap. She got it, she deserved it. Nothing to worry about op. Particularly given the driver said she was always nasty.

I think that being actively nasty (unprovoked) without using the word “fuck” is awful and disgraceful. Far worse than using the word “fuck”. Which was well deserved in this scenerio, regardless of the age of the miserable woman.

you should be demonstrating the moral high ground to your children. regardless of what a horrible person she is, beinff horrible back lowers you to her level. YABU id be very ashamed.