Was she rude or was I?

[AccidentalEyeContact]

Or maybe both?

Yesterday I was walking through a city centre when I saw what looked like a woman in a brightly coloured bandana coming the other way to my right. I did a slight double take and made accidental eye contact and she gave me a half annoyed, half quizzical sort of glare.

So, who was rude - or ruder?

YABU - you should have taken more care not to make eye contact with a stranger;
YANBU - she was dressed in an eye-catching way and shouldn't have been irritated about a slight double take.

It's interesting to take a straw poll nevertheless.

Yes! Ps. Love the typo sorry I don't normally point them out but it made me smile.

Good point. What I should have said was, 'it looked like a brightly coloured bandana on her head'

Lol! That's a very different story 🤣

Honestly she probably didn’t give you a second thought.

When she looked at you did you smile or just stare at her?

But was there something on her head? And if so, what?

Was she wearing the bandana because of hair loss? Maybe she gets a lot of double takes and is tired of it.

I'm having cancer treatment and the amount of 'innocent double takes' I get is ridiculous. I'm very young to have cancer so it's a bit shocking and some people really stare. It's like they think I'm juicy entertainment. It's ok if I'm wearing a proper winter hat because I blend in but anything else makes it obvious. I have to intentionally not make eye contact with people because I get so annoyed after a while, but I can still tell that it's happening. Some people even notify whoever they're with so they can all have a good look. I've sometimes given an angry glare back and I'm sure those people thought I was being rude and they only glanced at me, but when they're the thirtieth person that day, it gets tiring.

Edit: 'it looked like [...] and it was'.

I'm not sure if I smiled but I don't think I gave a funny look as I never do. With strangers anyway.

She had hair btw.

Neither of you were rude. If she’d said ‘what are you looking at?’ you could have said her bandana caught your eye.

You ABU for going to the lengths of actually typing this out. By default, I’m now unreasonable for engaging with it.

My question is - given our brief online interaction, who is more unreasonable?🙃

Just because you can see she had some hair didn't mean she wasn't suffering from hair loss. Chemo can cause hair loss at the scalp which she may have been hiding with the bandana whilst still retaining some visible hair at the sides.
I suspect, like a PP said, she was fed up of the looks she was getting. Next time you see a woman wearing a bandana, don't do a double take.

Sorry forgot to add try not to do a double take at people. It gets tiring.

IIRC she had neither short nor super long hair.

And this, in a nutshell, is why people in London avoid eye contact with strangers and keep ourselves to ourselves. When you are passing hundreds and hundreds of different strangers every day the possibility for fleeting , disconcerting and ultimately exhausting connections like this make this personal contact risky!

Cultivate our technique of looking ahead but never focussing on any individual and you won't go far wrong.

FeelingWeary 😁

I think you have to emigrate. Imagine the scene if you ever happened to see this woman again! You can’t take that risk. Pack everything up; just go and never look back. Or enter a convent. Preferably a Trappist order, so you never have to speak of this again.

Just sad that neither of you smiled.

@Plingston I eventually bought a t shirt that said ‘my oncologist does my hair’ Gets different sorts of stares🤣🤣

I'd say it was the most bonkers thread I've ever read.

Seriously - are we expected to go around looking at our feet rather than occasionally make eye contact? I mean really?

I have no input sorry OP, I can only see a woman with a banana on her head now after Awa's comment 😂😂

A thread about a glance?

Honestly - this is not even a thing.

If you were in London then your behaviour is so heinous that you need to change your name and leave the country. 😂