Hello again,

I had something happen a couple of years ago that came back to haunt me last night.  I thought I'd post it here and see if I could gather any additional insight.

The short story: My 5-year-old son was taking a gymnastics class.  One day, out of nowhere, the mother of one of the other students, a complete stranger, walks up to me in front of all the other moms waiting while their kids were in class, and starts _screaming_ at me that I was a bad mother because my son was disrupting the class and preventing _her_ son from "enjoying his experience".  Since I had _no_ clue what she was talking about (absolutely the first I'd heard of anything of this nature), and for other personal reasons, all I could do was sit there completely stunned and take it.  I ended up managing to keep it mostly together until she stormed off, but then I broke down in tears. (The issue of my child's behavior in class was subsequently dealt with through more proper channels.  Right now, I don't have questions about that; only this one woman's behavior.)

So:

1) what would be the immediate NT response to this?  I have no way to judge how my response compares to what would be "normal".

2) what would be the proper (NT) immediate response to this?

3) As I said, I was absolutely stunned by this.  It took me several days to even begin to process the experience.  It didn't seem quite right to just up and quit the whole gymnastics class over this, so we attended the class the following week.  Is there any response I should have had on seeing this woman the next week?  I ended up just trying to ignore her.  But while that did not escalate the situation, it sure didn't resolve it for me.

4) I would like feedback on my "default" response.  Note: I did _not_ follow through with this in any way, but it was my natural reaction.  My husband claims that this would only reflect badly on me, and not get the response I was looking for.  But, I don't always trust my husband's assessment, as he just barely gets onto the NT side of the spectrum.  I really wanted to take a large kitchen knife (we don't own any appropriate guns, or I might have chosen that), and put it in the other woman's hand and insist she finish the job she started the previous week, i.e. stabbing me in the heart or slitting my throat.  I swear, the whole thing hurt just as bad, and last night, when the experience came back to me _still_ hurts as bad.  If it weren't for the medication I'm on, I would be totally suicidal over this.  Would it have made any point to her on the damage she did me by insisting she just go ahead and kill me? Would it have made her feel better to know that she hurt me that badly?

5) Does any one know of how to deal with this now? Again, if it weren't for my medication, and a deep sense of responsibility to my family, I would be dead or dying right now.  Since I have no idea who this woman was, and am unlikely to be able to find out by going to the gymnastics school (we ended up stopping the class a few months after this event, for other reasons), I see no way of obtaining even an apology from her (which is the only thing I can think of that might start helping me feel better).  How do NTs manage with these types of event?

Thank you for any insight,

Celeste