polite snappy answer

[badgerbag]

This worked well today. Lady on bus, asking me really loudly, "What's wrong with your legs?".

I smiled and answered equally loudly, "If only it were that simple!"

"What?"

"I said, if only there were a good answer to that question!"

She was extremely confused and began to ramble about skiing.

Moomin developed a huge smirk. When we got off the bus he went "Mom you totally owned her!"

It was satisfying, not obviously rude, and saved me from having to say "I would prefer not to explain all my medical history to some stranger on the bus."

Comments

[badgerbag]

I have also sometimes had that happen -- someone starts out being super intrusive and they turn out to have a motivation like, oh, my mom is having trouble walking etc etc. I do try to be a diplomat a lot of the time and tend to record the times that I don't have the patience!! Maybe tomorrow will record every time it happens and think about patterns... When I think about yesterday for example I had The World's Most Boring Conversation for me, oh, about 6 times in 3 hours...