simont | (no subject)

I walked to Tesco at lunchtime, as usual. On the way back to the office with my sandwich, an amusing thought struck me. Not very amusing, and not remotely worth repeating either (good job too, since I now can't remember what it actually was). But it must have caused one corner of my mouth to quirk upwards noticeably, because a woman walking past stopped, stared at me accusingly, and demanded ‘What exactly are you laughing at?’

I stopped walking myself in order to stare at her in bafflement. ‘Go on,’ she demanded, ‘what was so funny?’, for all the world like a schoolmistress who's just caught one of her pupils sniggering when he should have been paying attention.

Whatever it was that had momentarily amused me was far too long to explain to her, so I didn't try. I just shrugged, and turned to walk away; and she turned away too and stomped off in the other direction, muttering to herself as if I'd dreadfully offended her in some way.

I think that's probably the most bizarre encounter I've had in the street for some time. It seemed as if she must have assumed I was laughing at her; but I could see no obvious reason why that might have been plausible. (She hadn't, for example, accidentally left the house still wearing bunny slippers, or shaved off half her hair by mistake, or anything like that. She just looked like an ordinary random woman walking along a pavement in an ordinary way. And I hadn't even glanced in her direction, so it's not as if I looked at her and then cracked up laughing.)

I wonder what it was all about. (Bonus point for the least plausible suggestion :-)

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It's pavement rage. Like road rage but for pedestrians.

Maybe she was remembering a dream of going to TESCO naked?

Unfortunately some people are just paranoid. Or just got out of the wrong side of bed that morning, or...

Normally the best thing to do is to say that you were thinking of something amusing which wasn't related to them. However sometimes some people don't seem to understand that some people do spend time in their head and don't need external sources of entertainment (i.e. TV, etc) to amuse themselves.

The only possible answer in situations like that is to explain that you're a programmer and it was something about C APIs that you think is really really funny.

Er, you were obviously amused and there was nothing obviously around to be amused at, so she thought you were laughing at her. Isn't that a completely normal reaction?

I dunno about 'normal, but it wouldn't have occurred to me. If I see someone smiling to themself, I assume they've just remembered/thought of something that makes them happy and/or amused.

I certainly hope not! If it were me I'm sure I'd include myself in the assessment that there was nothing obviously amusing around (after a quick sanity check for e.g. underpants worn on head), and conclude that the person must have just happened to think of something funny. Perhaps if everybody I met on a trip through the town centre burst out laughing when I walked past, I might start to think it was something about me, but from just one isolated incident? I think you'd have to be fairly paranoid to automatically assume that someone who hadn't even given any clear indication of noticing you was "obviously" laughing at you, particularly if you were so convinced that you felt free to stop and harangue them about it.

Well, some people are fairly paranoid. Although I think I'd be more paranoid that people would think I was mad for stopping and haranguing them in the street than that they were laughing at me in the first place.
Anyone stopping to ask me why I'm grinning in the street deserves all they get. ;-)

Well, I know I do that even when peopel don't laugh, but then I'm paranoid from September until April. Maybe she was too. She needs a lightbox.

She'd just been hit by a fleeting inspiron, and had thereby conceived the first truly original joke to grace this planet for some years. She wanted to make sure that you hadn't thought of it at the same time, as that would seriously impact on its market value.

It's another Cap'n Jack icon! They get everywhere!

*nances*

I have great difficulty keeping a straight face in meetings when people inevitably draw a diagram on the whiteboard that looks to me like a big set of genitals or whatever. My puzzing amusement this morning would have been when I realised that our company president had, if you thought about it hard enough, likened using our products to drinking a lot of arsenic. I hope nobody took much notice of me.

My problem in Tesco is that people keep thinking I work there so they ask me stuff.

she was walking stiffly, very concerned that her tone of nailpolish did not quite match the tone of her beltbuckle. this was a personal fashion disaster, she must be the laughing stock of all the nice ladies in the office.. even her rubber plant was wilting!

and now random starngers in the street laugh at her taste!!

She asks random people what they're laughing at, as form of practical joke.

I think if that's the case, the correct answer to the question is 'you'. In revenge of course.

I sometimes become convinced that random people in the street are making some response to seeing me, even when rationally I can decide it's probably a coincidence and nothing to do with me. Usually it happens when I walk past someone who simultaneously spits on the ground - I feel they're spitting as a response to seeing me; or if they sigh loudly, I feel they must be irritated by me in some way. I only normally notice these things, or worry about them, if I'm in a particularly paranoid mood, though, and usually then I'd just look in the other direction, or try to make myself insignificant. I can just about imagine being in a really foul mood, deciding someone was laughing at me, and addressing them about it angrily. (It's not something I've ever done, but I can just about conceive of doing it.)