Quote: Billy Bunter @ 21st May 2017, 8:37 PM
Don't worry about how strangers see you - they don't know you so how can they form any opinion? The very fact that they're strangers means you probably won't be encountering them again so it doesn't matter. As long as those close to you (who, if they didn't appreciate you wouldn't be close to you), and yourself, are happy with who you are, that's all you need to know.
As for the security officer & the lady on till, they were clearly on your side in the argument so you should be pleased that they were fully aware of what had occurred. They may have had trouble with that couple previously.
And don't let your parents get you down. We're all eccentric and get more so as we get older - it's just a question of degree. Just nod & smile sweetly rather than let them get to you. When they are no longer around, and it's too late to do anything about it, you don't want to look back and wish you had been more tolerant or appreciative of their problems You want to look back and be satisfied that you did all you could to make their final years as pleasurable as you could - despite any obstacles they may put in your way.
Thank you for such a thoughtful and helpful reply. That is so kind of you. We had just come back from a short break in Bournemouth. We hadn't been away for three years and I personally never expected to see the sea again. My Dad has never liked going away. My Mum always had to push him and when I was made redundant in 2010, a mainly disguised anxiety condition turned into a permanent crisis with periodic drama, however much I tried to do my best, and I have tried very hard, and an inability to travel far or go into crowded places, later changing into inability and unwillingness. Previously, I had been highly sociable, work, gigs, football, many friends, walking holidays with them and some travel abroad.
Even friends who weren't married with families started to drift away - two into alcoholism, one died from a brain tumour at 40, one developed a severe neurological condition at 50 and can't leave his house, another had a stroke at 52 and now two others have parents with dementia and physical illness and need to prioritise them. We had been like a family in some cases for 30 odd years and one or two were like my alternative parents but then it all stopped, especially as I wouldn't travel into London to see the ones who could meet. And in the past year my physical health has deteriorated. I feel gloomy about my prospects in the next few months in that way.
Social media has mainly been the answer for the best part of seven years - the only area where I feel as I have anything of a voice. I find much of radio and television increasingly alarming - all the talk about senility and cancer which is often based in money-making and a terroriser/torturer in my opinion and my faith in politics which was considerable has totally disappeared. Music was very key to me and that has just gone so downhill too culturally. It's like much of the world is alien in a way that I could not have possibly anticipated. There is very little sense of identification with "the modern world". In contrast, I always believed in my parents - my Mum's robust self-drive and mild sense of adventure led me to being far more adventurous than my Dad but I accepted my Dad for his humour and a lot more even when the two of them were in conflict.
But living next door, I have seen them as I write on the computer at the front of our houses becoming physically weaker and my Mum overdoing things because she can't do anything else, That has been upsetting and it has only been alleviated by conversation when I don't just observe them but we blindly engage. Now my father can't remember a lot of basic words. He couldn't really show any enthusiasm for anything on the holiday and privately he was verbally aggressive to my Mum for making a noise and keeping the lights on when she took her tablets, the sound of entertainment in an upstairs room, and almost everything else. She then relayed such things to me which I was able to accommodate mildly while we were there. I was also able to note in closer proximity what they were both like generally. She gets flustered when she isn't taking the lead and she talks constantly. These were all pressures.
The one thing that thrilled her was that I seemed to enjoy the break given all the likelihood that I would find situations hard to handle and was amazed that I seemed so well. When we got back the two of them were at loggerheads but both were fine with me and she was seeing it for me as a sort of upturn. I was getting up early, going out, being alright with people in the dining room etc. Perhaps I would even go on holiday now with a friend or friends. But following our return we got up on the following day to get food in and it all went totally pear shaped. It was like everything had completely backfired. My parents are well aware that when I go around a supermarket I do so on my own or else it is more difficult to manage situations that could occur.
Because she reacted so badly - everyone else is a really nice person and mainly right according to my Mum and Dad when patently that isn't the case - I turned on my father, saying that he could have shown more enthusiasm and shouldn't verbally attack my Mum. She is saying that she feels attacked by both of us, that I have his temper when actually I have coped with a hell of a lot with patience under duress and that I have shouted at her which is absolutely untrue.
She doesn't want to talk to me and this time she has really had enough. She is standing back. She's saying she is old - that is new - and he's not so bad (although they are barely talking). He was just frightened of everything from the word go and wanted to impress his father. I don't get those points fully. It feels like an end to me. A peculiar unnerving end. And actually those people in the supermarket represent to me people in 2017. I hate them. I hate almost everyone in 2017. And it seems a very empty place to be.
Otherwise I have absolutely no issues. 
(To be frank, this isn't wholly about or for me - I hope that the issues it raises may help other people think and be able to prepare for the future in a better way than I was able to do - I had no idea whatsoever what was coming my way and that lack of knowledge has often been terrifying. But thank you to BCG which along with other forums has helped to enable past and present connections to continue to a degree. There is a lot of the past us in the comedy - Dad identifies with George Roper and in my younger days there was more than an element of Rodney about me though less so now)
