submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) by to c/nostupidquestions@lemmy.world
 

I was just sitting at the mall taking a break from mall walking. A man walked over to me when I wasn't even looking up. He said "I haven't seen you here before. " I said I wasn't really here to talk to people and got up and walked away. He said he would leave, he may even have said sorry. I said I was ready to leave anyway. In retrospect I think he may have just been slightly mentally challenged so I wish I had been a little softer, he did not turn out to be aggressive. Looking for suggestions on something still clear and firm but more polite? This scared me for some reason, I think how fast he walked up and sat down near me.

Editing to add a key detail, he sat down close to me which is probably what made me more nervous than I would have otherwise been. I appreciate all the thoughtful feedback I've gotten and interesting discussion.

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[–] 5 points 1 week ago*

It took me a while to get to terms with man/woman, mainly because it feels like I'm a grown-up, and then I realised, fuck, I'll hit 30 soon...

Boy/girl works in informal contexts ("what's up, old boy"), but I would not like getting called a boy in a condescending way myself. So I decided to go with the more standard words for adult male/female humans, for no reason other than that they are neutral. In my native language, there is no direct equivalent of the nouns male/female, and the one we have sounds like straight out of a David Attenborough narration.

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