What just happened?!?

[Soup]

One fine day in NT land, an Aspie ran out of soup (the culinary equivalent of Armageddon!). Looking out of the window & seeing no neighbours lurking about, the Aspie leapt into her car & headed to the grocery store. She parked in the 'handicapped' slot right beside the entrance, suspended her vignette from the rear view mirror & exited her car, bag in hand, ready to get in, grab soup & get out. All of a sudden....

.... a silver jaguar pulled up & a woman whose hair matched her car jumped out & rushed up to her. the woman was gesticulating & speaking loudly in French (I'll put it into English here)

"What are you doing here? You can't BE here." The Aspie stood stone still in utter confusion. the woman repeated, "What are you doing here?!?"

"I want some soup." the Aspie truthfully replied.

"You can't park here!!! You must move your car immediately."

The Aspie was caught in a waking nightmare thinking: who is this person? What the hell is she talking about? WHY is she bugging me? The Aspie wheeled on her heels, did the Aspie head-hunched-into-shoulders thing & began moving towards the store. The crazy NT grabbed her arm albeit gently & said, "You are in a handicapped parking spot! You must move your vehicle NOW!"

That's when the Aspie had a minor melt-down; "TAKE YOUR HAND OFF OF ME! DON'T EVER TOUCH ME! This is my car & my vignette. I can park here whenever I damned well please now go away & leave me alone!!!

"Sorry, Mademoiselle! Your face looked so radiant that I couldn't tell you have a disability. You look fine!" sputtered the crazy woman.

"My FACE doesn't have a disability! Go away & leave me alone NOW!!!" the Aspie insisted.

You've probably guessed that I was the Aspie in question. What the heck kind of interaction was that? What had happened to me? What kind of a person was that? I've never seen her before or since. I really don't know what I had done or said to attract her attention or what the hell her problem was. Has anyone else ever experienced anything similar? What did you do? Should I have handled it differently?

 

[Loomis]

I think you did exactly what you should have done. I see no fault in you. The "lady" made a mistake and it put a burden on you. The "problem" as i see it is the same one I often have. I can't let go of stuff that goes wrong and I blame myself when I am not at fault. I take responsibility for stuff other people do. I did it today. My wife, (I have not moved out yet) did something stupid that i told her not to do but I still feel responsible. That is dumb for me to feel that way and I am working on trying to forget it and let it go. I should not have to work on letting it go.

I suspect you did the same thing. She was wrong, you acted impeccably, but you could not let it go. As aspie thing?

 

[Soup]

Thanks, Loomis! You're probably spot on in your assessment of the situation. By the time I got home, I was fit to be tied. Verrry upsetting. Had she been a store security guard, a traffic cop or someone one expects to stop people & ask them questions about parking it would've been unpleasant BUT much less unnerving. We need our own community like that town in England populated entirely by so-called 'odd' epople.

 

[rolo]

Sorry you had a distressing time of it-I have a blue badge which in uk gives me the right to use disabled parking-however people still sneer at me as although most of the time i have a stick, it still seems to them that I have no right to park there- for some ignorant people I would literally have to drag myself across the car park with my tongue to deserve that free parking space. people have no right to judge like that-maybe she wanted your space- she should never have touched you. At least you are home safe and sound and able to calm down and it appears you are supported on this site.

 

[Bay]

You did the right thing, Soup. I doubt that I would have been as good about it as you were.

 

[Soup]

Thanks for the support, guys! I really needed that. One day she'll stop the wrong Aspie & someone will shove her grey car up her grey @$$. Ignore the sneerers, Rolo. My grandmother used to say that if you make that kind of a face too often, it'll stick that way. SHE WAS RIGHT!!! Take a good look at some middle aged NTs: they look like that all the time. Better them than you! My natural expression is a complete blank flat even neutral look: easy to maintain & effortless. When necessary, I can arrange my features into that ever practical Mona Lisa smile when necessary too. Beats a high-maintenance yet ugly sneer any day!

 

[Kelly]

She was of the opinion you were not disabled and so you did not have the right to park in the disabled space but her reaction was totally over the top. Some people just tut about that kind of thing but some people get all vigilante about parking spaces.

I remember one time my husband needed his prescription, he'd run out of his mood stabilisers and needed them asap. He went to pick up his prescription, there were no spaces except 2 disabled spaces so he figured he'd park in one as there would still be one free and he should be a maximum of a few minutes in the surgery. He came out just as a woman was pulling into an ordinary space (someone must have left whilst he was in there), she got out and ranted furiously at him for parking in the space, he calmly told her he had only been there for 2 minutes whilst he got his prescription and there was another space free anyway. He thought that was the end of it until we got a letter a week later from the surgery asking us not to park in the disabled spaces anymore. It's mind boggling the lengths people will go to when they feel they are completely in the right and justified.

 

[Soup]

Once some people think that they're right, they think they have carte blanche to do & say whatever they want to. The problem is that every other person thinks s/he's a cop & that they have the right to monitor & supervise everyone else. These types eventually do interfere with the wrong person & things go badly for them. they then have plenty of time in the ambulance & in the emergency ward to rethink the role they played in their predicament.

 

[Pedro]

The way I see it the lady that went after Soup was way off since Soup had her vignette. However, I do get upset when I see normal people parking on the disabled space. Here in Brazil, people will park on such spots so they don't walk two hundred feet. And they always say "It was only for two minutes". Sure. Why would a disabled person be in a hurry, right!? And this is just a small example of our overall egocentric mentality. That's why I want to live in Canada or Sweden.

 

[Soup]

I'm Canadian & yes, we tend to be much more civil & we've created a more user friendly society BUT, like the grocery store crazy woman, we've got our pain in the neck sorts too. I always make sure I hang my vignette. I DO appear 'fine' but many disabilities are invisible. It isn't up to the general public to play cop & interfere with other private citizens. If she suspects that I'm using a vignette fraudulently, she can call a real cop to come check. Can you imagine even the most socially challenged Aspie doing something like that? Hard to picture. We're great at minding our own darned business!

 

[smith2267]

Yes NT's think everyone's business is theirs. I guess it's "normal".

By the by, off topic, but this forum bot that keeps editing my posts is kind of pissing me off. Does it bother anyone else?

 

[Christian T]

Ignore the sneerers, Rolo. My grandmother used to say that if you make that kind of a face too often, it'll stick that way. SHE WAS RIGHT!!! Take a good look at some middle aged NTs: they look like that all the time. Better them than you! My natural expression is a complete blank flat even neutral look: easy to maintain & effortless. When necessary, I can arrange my features into that ever practical Mona Lisa smile when necessary too. Beats a high-maintenance yet ugly sneer any day!

Indeed, it's like that horrible, patronising, stretched fake smile I always seem to get that people desperately pull when they clearly think I'm inferior to them, but they don't want me to know. I feel sorry for them: they're putting themselves through so much pain with little effect.

 

[Soup]

Take heart, ChristianT. These types do it to you because you have Asperger's. They do it to the next guy because he's black. They do it to the next person because she's a woman. The next person gets the contemptuous sneer because he's obese. The next one because he appears to be impoverished. The next one gets patronized because she's elderly. the next one gets labelled as being part of the 1% (remember those people sneering at Mayor Bloomberg in NYC because of his 'crime' of being a rich guy?) It really never ends. That's why their face tends to stick that way: they're sneering at all kinds of people throughout the day! Must be truly exhausting. They have an attitude problem: pity them: they do it to themselves.

 

[Christian T]

Soup, I shall be sure not to take their sneering too personally, and believe me, I do pity them:

I feel sorry for them: they're putting themselves through so much pain with little effect.

Good to hear that you pity them too.