u/Adverbsaredumb

I (F38) have had large earrings (14mm) since I was a teenager. A while back, I was at a gathering with multiple friends and our kids. One of the kids, who was about 12-14, asked me if it hurt to stretch my ears. Her mom immediately jumped in and said, “yes it hurts a whole lot”. I said, “no actually if you do it slowly and correctly, it really doesn’t hurt at all. It’s just really important that you do it right.”

The mom, who’s a friend of my friend and…sort of my friend but more of an acquaintance was visibly annoyed at me for this interaction. The subject was changed rather quickly by another friend and we moved on.

My issue is primarily that I don’t lie. But also that if a kid thinks it’s supposed to hurt, then they won’t know there’s a problem if they start to stretch their ears and it hurts. That could cause them to experience serious damage where they otherwise wouldn’t. I know several people who’ve had that experience, and I thought it would be irresponsible of me to be dishonest about this situation in the moment, given the possibility of a painful outcome for the child.

At the same time, I feel bad because it really should’ve been obvious to me in the moment that the mom wanted to deter her child from making the choice to stretch their ears and the child was young enough that their mom really did have that power over them. I’m autistic so I think this may be a situation where I grossly misread things and I would like to know if I should apologize.

I’ve had a lot of hard days recently; a lot of pain, fatigue, and brain fog. But today was nice and I wanted to share it with people who understand how rare and beautiful these good days can be. I’ve been in an intensive outpatient pain treatment program for about a month, doing ketamine infusions, TMS, red light therapy, and all kinds of other stuff. I think it’s finally getting me some relief.

I went to a water park with my family today, something I’ve been really dreading because theme parks are usually miserable for me. But this time, I finally decided to bring my wheelchair, and I had a really nice time floating around in the lazy river and clinging to an inter-tube in the wave pool.

I was really anxious about bringing the wheelchair because this was my first time using it at a park like this. It’s hard for me to ask my husband to push me around because I don’t want to be a bummer. But he was really sweet about it.

I’m exhausted and my hips are on fire, but I’m glad I went. I hope you all had a good day today. ❤️

So, my husband, teenage daughter, and I are at the laundromat, waiting for our clothes to dry, and a few minutes ago, we noticed a couple women dressed like JWs talking to some women in a truck outside. Then, they came inside, walked past us, approached a man who was trying to get his laundry out of a washer, and started trying to get him to go to church with them. During that conversation, they did confirm they were from the church of Latter Day Saints. After he declined to attend their church, they walked around the whole place, passed us again, and left.

What I’m wondering is, what could we have done that made them not approach us too? I’d like to do that every time so that I don’t have to deal with them.

The only things I can think of are that we were a different race from everybody else there (we’re white, and the JWs were white, but the others they approached weren’t white), we’re a family and the others weren’t, I’m wearing a NASA t-shirt, we all have big earrings, my husband has long hair…I don’t know. I’m not sure what their rules are so I’m kind of grasping.