Not realizing they're making fun

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I had an interesting situation happen to me a while ago. I'm in my 30s now, and I was having coffee with a friend, when suddenly this woman I knew in elementary school recognized me and greeted me. She was out with her family, and so felt the need to 'tell them about me':

"Guys! This is Fern. Do you remember the girl I told you was really good at making super random animal noises? Bark like a dog Fern. Make a noise like a bird. Do it! Come on, DO IT! Don't say no, DO IT!"

After saying no a few times I just went silent. She started laughing and eventually bid us farewell. Then my friend turned to me and asked, "She bullied you in school, didn't she?" A light went off then. I didn't ever consider her a bully at the time, because that was how most kids at my school treated me, but yes, I think this was light bullying. They'd come up to me, ask me the same kind of question "Hey, cluck like a chicken" or something or something that amounted to a demand for me to perform for them, then they'd laugh and walk away. I guess I just figured they had boring tastes in humor, not that they were necessarily mean, not like the kids who would call me things like "animal freak," or more overt bullying.

... anyway, anyone have a similar shared experience?

I've not had a similar experience but have come to the realisation that some types of 'making fun' apparently didn't affect me as I just didn't realise what was going on.

Wow, that woman needs growing up a bit.

I can generally tell when someone is making fun, even if it's subtle. When I was 15 I had a keyring on my locker key what I had for ages, and it was related to a kids show. Some girls in my science class saw it and acted all nice, and one of them said, "my sister has one of those. She's eight." And something told me that they were making fun of me for having a "kiddies" keyring by the way they added "she's eight".

I had people tell me to say stuff that's inappropriate because they knew I'd repeat it (echolalia). I also had people get me to do stuff against the rules and laugh when I got in trouble. In neither case did I realize I was being bullied.

I'm sorry that this happened to you and this has obviously brought up a very painful memory for you. I feel exactly as you do as I've made several realizations about my own childhood where humans have bullied me in similar situations as yours.

I think I might have an explanation for this painful event. At the time you were bullied your psyche turned into wood to avoid feeling the pain and the memory was instantly repressed. But seeing this vicious and mean-spirited female after all those years regurgitated the memory and you looked at through the eyes of adult and realized that she was bullying you.

Next time, slap her. It will feel good and all of us Aspies will congratulate you for it.

Bad idea, especially if there are witnesses. You could get in to lot of trouble for it. Verbal slap on the other hand might be a good idea... a subtle one if you have the skills for it.

Sometimes not realizing that someone is trying to bully you, is to your advantage, because it makes it impossible for them to get the reaction out of you that they really wanted.

At one of my first jobs, which I worked at for a short time, I had a co-worker, who wasn't my boss, but who had been with the company for over a decade, and had some authority over me. For some reason, she apparently didn't like me. I didn't understand this until years after I left that company, and I wasn't able to figure out why she didn't like me for some time there after. I've since come to suspect this was political in nature. I'm not a very political person, and never bring up politics at work, but I had started working at that company during elections, and she had asked me who I was voting for, and I didn't care to answer but I wasn't sure how to handle the situation at the time, so I answered...it wasn't the answer she wanted.

Anyway, in short, during my time there, she committed what I now recognize to be a number of micro aggressions against me. For example, she would often make unreasonable requests that she knew were impossible for me to fulfill. The boss once had me print out a number of documents which took between 2 and 10 seconds to print. At the same time, this woman requested I perform a task for her. When she saw me sitting there for the 2-10 seconds while each document printed, she reprimanded me for not using that time to work on her task, even though the only thing I could have possible done in that 2-10 seconds was spin around once in the chair. Another time, she had placed something on my desk...which made it the only thing on my desk aside from the computer monitor and the phone, where it remained for a number of days until she came back around and told me that I needed to put it in a drawer because "we try to keep our work stations clean around here".....her desk, and all of the others, were covered in so many piles of paper and junk that the desk tops themselves could not be seen. At the time, I didn't realize she was being unreasonable, and I thought the problem was me, so my response was was merely to say "Ok" and make a note to try better.

Yet another time, she claimed someone had mixed up the server backup tapes and attempted to pin the blame on me. But the joke was on her. When she was explaining to me their server backup protocol, she was confusing. At first I thought I just didn't understand, but when I carefully went back over what she was saying, I realized she literally wasn't making sense. Thankfully, I managed to dodge this responsibility because on the days I worked, another co-worker who had been with the company for many years would typically arrive shortly after me, and always managed the backups, so I never had to.

Anyway, looking back, I now realize she was likely trying to pick a fight with me, in hopes I would respond in a manner that would get me fired, and when that didn't work, assuming I had been the one managing the backups, since she had "explained" to me how to do them, tried to pin a potentially costly mistake on me, only to be informed that the only two people who had done any backups since I had started working there were our other coworker, and herself.

I didn't realize it at the time, but looking back, these failed attempts to bully me were probably really just backfiring and causing her to become rather irate and frustrated inside.

What a horrible situation. I'm impressed by your response though: simply not giving this woman-child any leeway and stonewalling her shows that the joke - if any - is ancient history and you're not in elementary together anymore. Hopefully it also showed her up as a jerk in front of her relatives, too.

Yeah seems like she could have been trying to make fun of you, but that you didn't really perceive it till after she left probably means she didn't get the reaction she desired which is good. Though I know that can be a crappy feeling when you realize it.

I do think it would have been funny if you just pretended not to know her...then she probably would have gotten embarrassed. Perhaps next time you run into a situation like this it would be an idea lol.

That still happens to me sometimes. I seem destined to fail to pick up on the signals for irony on occasion. Also, my open-minded and accommodating habits make me ready to accept people's eccentricities.

Sometimes, I can even turn the teasing back onto them at the last minute. If they made some claim that they expected me to find ridiculous, and I missed it initially, I can continue to pretend to believe what they said. If I say something like "I don't discriminate against people who [whatever supposedly absurd thing]," that may prove effective. Exercise caution: The failure mode of clever is a**hole - Scalzi

Yes. I would be told to quote my favorite lines from movies or talk like a Teletubby and they always laughed. I liked the attention and they enjoyed me hearing me imitate characters and found it hilarious. Always sad to find out someone who seemed to be nice to you and liked you was actually bullying you.

Wow, that is incredibly immature for someone in their 30's!

Good to hear you said no.



I wouldn't call that subtle. It was a clear slight.
I heard something similar happen when I was 14 or 15. We had to put book binding on the our text books, and I used TMNT binding. A girl said "yeah, they're cool. I liked them when I was 5"
I was very aware she was calling me childish. I used whatever I liked and hadn't asked for any views on it, so I got annoyed and suggested what she could do.
She got all "it was just a joke".
Yeah right.

Arrgghh! I loathe it when someone tries to make out that you have no sense of humour or are too sensitive.

Maybe I should just grow rhino skin and laugh at everything just in case