Hiding in the attic

I'm hiding in the attic at the moment. I'm not cool with other people. Any of them. Which is really fricking weird, because almost everyone I know is at least a bit lovely. I know that. But I'm still hiding in the attic.

I'll get over it in a bit, I guess, it's really not that much of a big deal - but earlier today, in the middle of the village I live in, I nearly got into a fight in the street. It's so weird. More than a little my own fault, I guess: Two youths were walking along the street, and one of them said something along the lines of "alright, ginger" to me, and barged me for no good reason. I can't remember what I said exactly, but something along the lines of "what the hell was that for?".

All a bit of a blur after that, but I end up standing with some scrawny teenager doing the aggressive talk thing about me in some way "acting like the big man, innit"so close to my face that the tips of our noses touched. I guess I was supposed to back off at this point, but I'm strangely not that bothered by the proximity thing (I guess years of jitsu took care of that) so despite being properly freaked out, the only thing not really bothering me is how close he is.

I'm having trouble at this point understanding what the hell he's saying between the "innit"s - seriously, it was probably English but I have no idea what he was saying. I think he wanted me to start a fight with him or something, or he was threatening to beat me up, or... something. In broad daylight. In the middle of the village. What the fuck. What. The. Fuck.

So aside from "what the fuck?" I don't really know what to say to him... I'm certainly not going to hit him unless he attacks me, mostly because I'm a wuss and partly because I'm enough of a wuss that if I *do* have to hit him I'm not going to dick around playing nice; I'll be going for his eyes, windpipe, groin and (given the opportunity) stomping on his knees. Which is going to get me in Deep Shit. And I just went out for a walk on a Saturday, and my brain is swimming in What The Fuck??? and I'm having flashbacks to school, and on top of that I can't get over the incongruity of the situation, that someone so much smaller than me is trying to get into a fight with me, and they're treating me like I'm someone to be bullied in the playground...

So I gave him a hug. Prizes to anyone who can figure out what on earth possessed me there.

Strangely, this didn't effortlessly defuse the situation. It did seem to freak him out, and then piss him off even more (so now there were accusations of both gayness and molestation hidden in the mostly unintelligible stream of noise coming out of his face-hole). Back to another round of him mouthing off and me, basically, saying "what the fuck??" over and over. I think this, combined with my squeaky terrified/exasperated voice, may have blown my chances of intimidating him into going away. Eventually he plain came out and demanded that I hit him if I was, indeed, such a big man. I pointed out that of course I'm not going to hit him. I think that was taken as a submission, because he started to proceed Fucking Off To Buy Booze at this point, slowly, shouting threats at me still while I (positively drunk with confusion now) told him that he was welcome to hit me, but I wouldn't be hitting him back (this bit would be a lie; I don't know that I'd have gone apeshit had he hit me, but I don't know that I wouldn't either). I suspect perhaps the evil bit of my subconscious had, at this point, noticed the CCTV camera pointed at us and wanted to give him every opportunity to get nicked.

So then I went home, a bit shaken up. Just a bit, so I thought. Except I now don't want to see any people again ever and would prefer to live my life sitting here at the keyboard and never go out. This is not the response of a sane and rational mind. Now it's out in words, though, I feel considerably better. I suppose writing about things really does help.

...That plus I totally gave his description to the police. Little bastard.