I also look “too young” to need my walking stick (37), not sure when you look like you’re old enough. I work in the Medical School in Aberdeen and everybody there, students and staff alike have been very nice and accommodating to me apart from once when I went through a swing door which I can’t hold open for people behind me (not enough hands/balance) and got a sarky comment from the student who had to open the door herself, think she might not have seen the walking stick. Generally I find that people are nice to me when I’m out and about, I only really find numpties when I’m on a night out and they’ve been drinking, it’s worrying how brainless some people get with a drink in them!
I feel like I should apologise for my mother! she has some very unfortuate facial expressions (as did my grandmother), tends to look people up and down over the top of her glasses, it is embarassing sometimes (well all the time actually) I tell her she looking like her mother! that stops her for that particular moment, when anyone else does the same thing (I put it down to bi-focals!) she huffs and puffs and gets very upset on my behalf (when they are probably respoding to her(non deliberate) filthy looks
I do try to stop her, even told her that if she looked at me like that, she’d certainly hear about it! Also have to tell her to let go of the wheelchair, which she tends to ram into people (not surprised she gets ‘the look’) and she also reads signs to me! which drives me bonkers, she will stop and read out loud ‘only four items allowed in fitting room’, for no reason at all, it can be signs in shops, in the street, always begins with ‘it says here’, stops abruptly in front of people, the gives them ‘the look’ when they bump into her. So having said all that, I just ignore it and think maybe they are just the same as my mother! I would bet on someone thinking’ what a rude woman’…in fact that would probably be me!