06/28/17 - 3:35 p.m.

So this time I'm depressed about a stranger being rude to me. To be fair, I inadvertently entered what may have been a private conversation. And they were at a crucial moment where they were trying to attract sympathy -- possibly by exaggerating -- right before I arrived to contradict them. And before that the stranger was probably freaked out -- young and with a lot of other strangers coming up to them. That may have had them not reading the situation exactly right -- or maybe young people are just really weird.

The more I think about it the more I think it was just the first thing -- I interrupted as they were trying to get sympathy. And not realizing I'd interrupted, I was really startled by the ferocity of the response. (Ironically, *I* may have been the person that read the tail-end of the situation wrong.) So, a standard-issue miscommunication. It's funny, though -- it doesn't really end the hurt feelings.

Partly because we never talked it out or figured out what happened -- so there's no moment where my own boundaries got defended, or we agreed upon why this won't happen again. Maybe the moral of the story is that public places can be weird. (Or that I don't always pay attention to what's going on around me, and can wander in to trouble.) But if I had some friends around me, there'd be some sympathy for my perspective. ("Geez, dude, you just totally and completely walked right into that.") I actually once walked into a situation a long time ago at college -- and someone at the dorm later said they felt sorry for me for the slap-back I'd gotten in response. I deserved better, the opinion seemed to be. And that'd probably go without saying now too - if I could just see the crazy misunderstanding that led to this all.

To be fair, the stranger was acting weird, and it *was* hard to figure out who they were talking to. But I probably also would've had some warnings if I'd been more in tune with the people around me.