I agree - this could be a more potent tactic than either jeering back (which means accepting their terms of engagement) or ignoring them (which they might see as just a challenge to work harder to provoke a response). Calmly shifting the tone to one of neutral information sharing would likely take the wind out of their sails and, as you say, might even provoke a very different and more positive kind of conversation. A person would need to be feeling pretty cool and confident to try it, though!
I have seen this all my life even when i was fit, then long ago it was because of my beliefs, i then read a paragraph from a University professor who said people react in this way because they don’t understand and have a fear of the unknown. Try and gain a thick skin and i did like the quite why wound you let someone into your head that you would not allow into your home.
Thank you all so very much, your replies have given me a lot to think about and a lot of strength, My daughter is doing a costal walk next weekend so I will have to go back to the same place, although I am sure they won’t be there it will be good to go with Hubby, who is on red alert, bless him.
Some great responses here, Dan particularly, that’s stellar, I’m really glad they’ve given you some strength, BC.
Enjoy watching your daughter’s walk, and hopefully you don’t end up in a situation where you can test out how you’ll respond to these kind of jeers in future, but if it does happen, a kind and dignified response is absolutely a far better way if you can do it, people really don’t know how to react when they get a non-retaliatory or antagonistic reaction to their jibes, because that’s never what usually happens.
At the very least it shuts them up, at the best it totally disarms them, and if you can manage it without humiliating them, so they don’t feel the need to save face with further rudeness, it potentially alters their perception. It might make them think before making another thoughtless comment, (see now, I was gonna say think twice, there, then I realised that the people who do this kind of thing don’t think once, do they!) it might even make them change their ways entirely, and think how great that would be!
The last time there was something ‘witty’ when out on the powerchair, “Oy giz a go”, to which I shouted,“Give me your effin’ legs and you can have it”.It went quiet apart from his mates laughing.
I get the occasional,“Ye hah cowboy”,but when I explain it’s an Australian bush hat made out of Skippy,they realise the error of their ways and any under 40 probably Google skippy
I find that there’s a begrudging respect that I’m out and still having a go.I’m doing a dress rehearsal for some of them…Booze,smoking,drugs,obesity et blah blah…Birkenhead can be so uplifting.They need steel shutters around Gregs,not my cigarettes…Eight years ago today the smoking ban started. Bye bye pubs and Bingo
Of course Wb mentioning Birkenhead gives me an immediate mental image of Lily Savage in a wheelchair, and the kind of retorts she’d throw at hecklers xD You can guarantee she’d know how to shut them down!