stupid old woman upset me in Boots.

[misdee]

Went in there to pick up the families perscriptions and some fish oils. dd2 started screaming, whilst dh was sorting out the perscriptions. I picked up some snacks for the kids, and went to the check out past the perscription queue. i could hear her and her friend tutting and speaking in quite annoyed tones. i went to pay for the fish oils and snacks. as stupid old lady went out she looked at my dd2 with malice in her eyes and tutted repeatedly at her. the checkout girl asked me if i was ok, at which point i started crying (feeling stupid now). usually i can cope with people tutting etc, aqnd just think they are rude incosiderant people and just get on with it. The check out girl heard her tutting as well.

dh said that she was moaning at the perscription queue, that people with large orders should have to wait. Its not out fault that both my kids and dh have large perscriptions that are regularly needed.

just feeling hormonal today i guess.

i had a not so old woman have a go at me last night - doing the shopping - heavily pregnant, fed up and tired, came out the end of an aisle as she came flying around the corner, had to swerve to miss her and I apologised - just said oops, sorry.... well middle aged dressed in a suit woman said SO YOU SHOULD!!!

What the hell - you almost smash into my trolley and I should be sorry... I almost lost it then and there - took all my will power to just keep walking and get the shopping done - dh was most impressed - normally I would have gone ballistic!!

I was in the post office during the summer holidays without the children for a change. The queue was very long (about 20 mins waiting) an older lady was in front of me and we got talking, I explained to her that I was having an afternoon to myself, she was very sympathic about how tiring it is to have young children etc, etc, blah, blah, blah.

She admired some little girls that I thought were sitting playing beautifully, she said how pretty they were, I was thinking thank goodness my DSs aren't here they would be running riot by now. When we got to the front of the queue she turned her attention back to the girls again and said "However I do wish they wouldn't be so loud, I suspect it's because they have to talk over the television all day long", I was gobsmacked, before I could say anything she was off to be served.

Why do you all rush to judge this old lady?
I Know it is hard but you should try to let kind if thing wash over you.
She may have a mental disorder.
Why do we rush to defend our childrens' behaviour but have little understanding for those who on the face of it act inappropriately?

This lady certainly acted inappropriately and I can totally see why you were upset misdee, I am not getting at you.

My gran got a bit funny in later life. I would hate to think people called her an old bag or a miserable old trout. Truth is she was suffering from a ment al disorder and deserved sympathy and understanding.

manutd,

Totally take your point - but the old lady in question sounds as if she had control of all her faculties but was just a miserable so and so!

I imagine Misdee has got over it now though since it was back in July

handlemecarefully thanks for not shooting me down in flames. I am slightly obsessed with (not judging people)this for a variety of reasons. I also have a teenage nephew who has some kind of spectrum disorder ( I am not close enough to sil to discuss it- may be Aspergers, I don't know) I have known him since babyhood and love him dearly but he can be a nghtmare socially! I Know people who don't know him think he is an a##e. He has come out with some trully awful things in public (can't say more for fear of being identified). He appears completely normal whatever that is.
I worry for his future as the older he gets the less people seem willing to understand.
I can well imaging him as a growm man tutting in the post office (or worse)

sorry that was a roundabout way of saying you can't tell from looking whether someone is in control of their faculties.
Can I just repeat I am not challenging misdee for getting upset just worried about those who have pitched in to call this old lady horrid things with no possession of the facts.
Misdee hope you are ok now.

i'm fine. it was over the summer anyway. but the dear seemed in complete control of her marbles and very with it. remember she had just been moaning about my poor dh having to pick up perscriptions. thats what really annoyed me afterwards, as its not my dh fault he is seriously ill and has huge amounts of perscriptions to pick up. The boots store in question actually make up the perscriptions in front of you so you dont have to come back later for them. Unfortunatly this means that sometimes u could be there for 20mins if stuck behind my dh.

ah munutd- the thing is the kiddies with autism are the ones who get tutted at most by the old bats we're talking about here. My friend appeared at my house very wound up 2 days ago. Her dd quite quite quite clearly has learning difficulties (she has physical difficulties that go with it so it should be obvious even to the idiots who don't notice that my 5 year old son is shrieking becuase he can't talk but anyway). Anyway friend's dd was being very rude but in a very obvious there's something wrong way- my friend was down at her level dealing wth it when some old man poked his nose in and said right in this little girls face "stop being so naughty and listen to your mother". Well that was it- she's autistic and my friend thought she was going to attack the man- luckily my friend's mother was with her and took the grumpy old man aside and had a bit of a go at him.

Afterwards I was talking to my mum wondering how on earth they had been unable to see there was something wrong- and mum pointed out that that generation don't see it because they never saw it. Children like my friend's dd and my son would have been institutionalised from the age of 2 or 3 and never seen again- definitely not in public. Unfortunately this means that that particular generation can be especially ignorant- not the only ones by any means- I get plenty of tuts and comments from people with young children as well.

My grandmother has senile dementia- but it was fairly easy to tell when she was losing it tbh- although granted its not always easy at the beginning.

we gwet that too jimjams, with mieows kiddies. old man told her ds he should be walking, mieow said something about him having cp, the old bloke replied, 'well he is obviously smart enough to get you pushing him about all day!'

my point jimjams is that the kiddies grow up to be adults!

and most of the old bats aren't very nice to adults with obvious difficulties. I have seen adults with (fairly severe and fairly obvious) AS being treated appallingly by adults. Sorry but these old people who behave like this can be perfectly vile and they often make life quite difficult for us when we go out. There is a difference between an old erson carrying on in a "in my day" kind of way (which makes me laugh usually) and just butting in and escalating situations or making life hard. Sorry its half term (end of thank god) and its the tut tut brigade that can make it such hard work to go out.

misdee- I guess cp was the same- never seen so somehow they don't process it. Even my lovley elderly neighbour had trouble taking on board that ds1 can't somehow "control" himself and she knows he can't talk and the extent of his difficulties- somehow she can't match his behaviour with that though. She's even said things like well we didn't see children like this in our day - they would have had to sit down blah blah. Then you point out that she didn;'t see them becuase they were institutionalised and she'll say "oh yes there was so and so's little boy but you never saw him, and there was so and so up at the big house but he was sent away somehwere"....... Anyway had a chat with my friend from the lift story yesterday- she's always said that her dd's learning diasbled when challeneged by the old folk- I told her they won't even know what that means- and she should borrow Davros's technique so now she's going to say that her dd's handicapped. (horrible word). I just say "he can't talk" if people butt in with us- that confuses them sufficiently to back off usualy (although I have had comments about him being rude for "refusing" to answer the question "what's your name").

but i am also saying that not ll old people are like that manutd. i live in a sheltered bungalow scheme for elderly and disabled people. the kids next door to me are very disabled, no-one has said a bad word about them since ive been here, even i have become used to the screams and shouts coming from next door. my dd asked why they scream, i said its because they cant talk like she does and thats how they let people know whats wrong. she seems satisfied with that. There is another lady down the rd who has a severely disabled daughter and again everyone likes her too. The elderly people in this scheme are very understanding, as its a mixed scheme i guess they have to be.

Altho the other week a mini bus driver tried to deliver me an old man, i didnt order one!!

she got the address wrong so i sent her the right way.

I understand what your saying manutd about some older people not being in control of what they say and do, but some are just very rude and cant tolerate kiddies no matter what. The lady in question that day was just a spiteful lady. she was moaning in the queue before and then tutted loudly at my dd. admittedly my dd2 looks closer to 4-5yr old than 2, but no-one should tut at kiddies imo.

My mother has dementia can now can't control what she says. BUT, tbh she has always been much the same and could say the most dreadful tactless things to and about people. If anyone walked passed her who looked different in any way she would loudly comment on them, often in the most rude way. Ironicaly she was always super sensitive about what people said about her! Her sisters are just the same. I lived in dread when I walked anywhere with her.

She always has been the most insensitve and tactless person. Even now in her demetia she will still lacish masses of affection on my dh, saying how 'special' boys are. She will ignore my dd. Anyone looking at the situation would put this down to her dementia, but it isn't. She said the same thing to me all through my life!

It is interesting that a generation that prides itself on manners etc feels free to be so tactless.

Jimjams, thanks for posting about elderly people never seeing disability until recently due to the ending of the practice of putting children in institutions. Never thought that one through before.
However, important to say people were very distressed about sending their relatives away - but they were told, by people in authority who they trusted, that it was for the best and that their children/relatives would be looked after better than in the outside world. My grandmother, now sadly no longer with us, never got over her youngest brother being 'put away' as it was described then. She visited him every week and took him out for the day. Not sure quite what had originally caused his problems - one family story was polio contracted as a baby, one being kicked in the head by the milkman's horse - but he had epilepsy in the days when there was no treatment, so frequent seizures caused brain damage. Maybe knowing Uncle Alan was one of the factors that made my sisters and I so used to disability that we didn't see the children and adults we knew with a range of disabilities as particularly different, just as individual people like everyone else. And maybe that's why my sister has ended up working with people with learning difficulties.
Uncle Alan's life was very sad, because he was institutionalised. I'm very glad that people aren't treated in this way any more.

It must have been heartbreaking edam. I know that if we had been living with ds1 50 years ago he would have been put away by now and I can't imagine how I would have coped with that. I'm sure we would have been told to "forget him and have another baby" as well. That went on until recently though- I've read of awful stories where mothers were told they'd caused their child's autism in the 60's (bettleheim and all that) - the child was then taken away and institutionalised with very little family contact- the mother's then had to cope with the guilt that they were responsible and with their child no longer being with them. heartbreaking.

My sister works with some of the people who were taken away from their families in the 60s, or even earlier. One of her service users has it on her medical records that her difficulties were caused by vaccination. Strange how no-one these days is vaccine-damaged, huh?

lol@ misdee's order didn't the old man say he didn't live there???

he lives about 5 doors away mieow. he tried telling the driver that he didnt live here, but the poor man was being talked over. I just said he wasnt mine! he then managed to tell the driver number 35 not 25 lol.

still makes me giggle today. the bungalows do all look the same tho.