Weird situation with new neighbor from high school - WWYD

[Anonymous]

I would have given her a pass, except for the kid part. How is that any less 'damaging' to say that to children as a full grown woman? And how did she even know you lived in the same neighborhood, was she keeping tabs? Please be gracious. I couldn't be, I'd tell her where to get off and promise to embarrass her if you get a whiff of her poisoning the waters in the neighborhood.

[Anonymous]

I wouldn't do anything except treat her as you would treat any other person new to the neighborhood, be kind and friendly.

Now, if things start getting weird and she become hostile or aggressive or stalkerish come back and update us, my advice will be different.

[Anonymous]

While it's strange that she's bringing it up to your family members, it is not unusual for the person who is picked on and excluded to remember it more than the people who did the excluding. So I would make a real (not snide) apology to her for your high school behavior and see if that changes things. If it doesn't, feel free to ignore her.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:it sounds like you were snobby and exclusive towards her.

You and your friends considered her “socially awkward” and were exclusive to her. She was probably just trying to be friendly and your friends interpreted that as her pushing her self into situations where she was t welcome. Because you were too cool to hang out with her.

And she remembers that you were snobby and mean and exclusive.

There were girls like that in my high school class. I would hate to live near them or work near them because they would bring up bad feelings.

So yeah, you were a mean girl in high school and now it’s coming back to bite you.

Can’t say I feel sorry for you.

Would you go around telling new neighbors all about it when you first meet them? Surely you understand how pathetic that would be in this hypothetical situation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:it sounds like you were snobby and exclusive towards her.

You and your friends considered her “socially awkward” and were exclusive to her. She was probably just trying to be friendly and your friends interpreted that as her pushing her self into situations where she was t welcome. Because you were too cool to hang out with her.

And she remembers that you were snobby and mean and exclusive.

There were girls like that in my high school class. I would hate to live near them or work near them because they would bring up bad feelings.

So yeah, you were a mean girl in high school and now it’s coming back to bite you.

Can’t say I feel sorry for you.

Are you saying that as a teenager, you were friends with absolutely everyone and never did anything that could be interpreted as "snobby"? I doubt it very much.

I was far from a mean girl in high school, and there are definitely a lot of people I went to high school with that I just wasn't friends with. Not anything against them or anything against me. We just weren't friends. OP wasn't friends with this girl, and that's fine. It's not kindergarten where everyone needs to be friends.

OP, I would let it go and chalk it up to her being awkward. If she brings it up again directly, I'd probably say something along the lines of, "It was not appropriate to introduce yourself to my children in order to tell them that you felt I was mean to you when I was a teenager."

[Anonymous]

OP was probably a nasty bully and now that someone called her out to her face, she doesn’t like it

[Anonymous]

She sounds like a loon. I’d ignore. This could be a bad Lifetime movie script….

[Anonymous]

Oh c'mon... This lady intentionally bringing up OP apropos of nothing to her kids and then saying that? She's nuts. Politely avoid engagement.

[Anonymous]

How small is this town?

[Anonymous]

I would avoid discussing her with any of the neighbors and attempt to keep things positive. The more she continues leading her conversations with this topic, the more unsettled she will appear. If pressed I would defend by saying that "I wasn't mean to her and certainly didn't hate her. We travelled in different circles and I never had any interaction with her."

[Anonymous]

She was socially awkward then, and is still clearly socially awkward now. Think about it, OP - she TOLD YOUR KIDS you were mean to her. And your DH (or her DH did. So she married a socially clueless man, too). Just ignore. Or, if you want to take the high road, talk to her and clear the air, but…wow. She didn’t even get the “lay of the land” so to speak before trashing you. That isn’t going to go well for her.

And, most people don’t care what happened in high school. People still nursing grudges from high school in their 30s and 40s need therapy, and the rest of us recognize that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Don’t do anything and be as gracious as you can when anyone mentions it. Something like “I don’t recall that we knew each other very well but I know high school can be tough and I hope I didn’t hurt her feelings somehow.”
No one who meets a woman like this is going to assume you did anything bad. They’re going to assume she was a little nuts then and is a little nuts now. Just be generous and gracious and don’t add to any gossip about it.

Thank you. My husband said she's right at the verge of having called me a bully, so I felt like if I went to find her and talk to her about this she might view it as confronting her and bullying her now.

[Anonymous]

Get a small potted plant for her, with a note saying "Welcome to the neighborhood!" Have your kids drop it off on her step.

[Anonymous]

Her bringing this up to the kids is extreme, but it would be so refreshing if you could actually have a conversation with her and hear her out. The bullies almost never remember doing anything wrong, and the bullied are often scarred for life. I’m not saying you were definitely a bully, but if you had been then you would have said the same things you did here: she was always butting in, she was awkward, you don’t remember much.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:She was socially awkward then, and is still clearly socially awkward now. Think about it, OP - she TOLD YOUR KIDS you were mean to her. And your DH (or her DH did. So she married a socially clueless man, too). Just ignore. Or, if you want to take the high road, talk to her and clear the air, but…wow. She didn’t even get the “lay of the land” so to speak before trashing you. That isn’t going to go well for her.

And, most people don’t care what happened in high school. People still nursing grudges from high school in their 30s and 40s need therapy, and the rest of us recognize that.

+1 Anyone who she brings this up to is going to look at her like she has two heads. It's a weird thing to bring up, and makes it seem (rightly so) that she is nursing a decades-long grudge. Any adult she speaks to is going to pick up the crazy.