Dear Abby: Concern or Stalking

[cereta]

DEAR ABBY: I'm a retired man who took a community college class. My lab partner was a young woman who was having difficulties attending the class. She wasn't there for the final exam, and I wondered if she had dropped the course. I did not have her phone number or her email address, but she had mentioned she worked at a nearby bank, so I went to visit her there. We talked for a few minutes and she told me she had actually done quite well in the class.

When I told my wife and daughter about it, they were shocked. They said what I did was inappropriate because of the age difference and she could have gotten into trouble at her job. Abby, they almost accused me of stalking her.

I don't understand why they considered this inappropriate. Is there a social rule that makes my behavior incorrect? I find it hard to believe someone would get into trouble for talking to a person in the bank at any age. Gender should not be a concern. I would have done the same thing had she been a man my own age. -- AM I MISSING SOMETHING?

DEAR AM I: You appear to be a very nice person. What you are "missing" is the fact that your wife is insecure, and your daughter backed her mother up. You did nothing wrong.

Comments

[tielan]

I think it's the fact that she mentioned where she worked that puts this in the 'okay' basket, as well as the fact that the bank is nearby rather than out of the way - at least this first time.

If she hadn't mentioned it and he tracked her down, or if it was out of the way and he turned up, or if he keeps going back to see her, then, yes, all the warning flags flying.

I'm more concerned about Abby's dismissal of the wife and daughter as 'insecure' than I am about the guy's behaviour at this point in time, given the information we have.

[recessional]

Honestly this parses as entirely normal behaviour to me, for that reason. It would be different if:

- they weren't lab partners/hadn't spent a similar amount of time working in tandem (like a major project, or something)
- she hadn't mentioned where she worked
- it weren't a bank, which is a public-facing person-off-the-street-interaction job - like if she worked in an office-building or at a school or something else not-at-all public.

But with the details as is, this is the kind of thing people of both genders where I grew up and several of the places I lived would do as a sort of matter of course. I have literally done similar things in similar situations, and have literally had people (of both genders) check in on me similarly. Just an "oh hey I know where X might be part of public life, I'll just drop in quick and make sure nothing horrible happened." *palms up shrug*

In the social model I grew up in, the kind of interaction and cooperative work implied in lab partners creates enough of a social bond that casual but deliberate contact in public spaces outside of class is totally normal, and again bar it being Busy a supervisor at the bank (or restaurant, or cafe, or grocery store, or whatever) would consider five minutes to catch up a non-issue.

So for me, absent any other warning signs at all, the immediate jump to "this is SO WARNING SIGNAL BEHAVIOUR" feels very odd. I respect that others may feel that way! But it's really weird to me.


Tho yes, dismissing the women in his life as "insecure" DOES very much parse as . . . .off, to me, because it doesn't seem to have anything to do with the issue. Maybe she felt the word "paranoid" was too harsh, or "worry about this too much" had too many words? But insecure feels weirdly like somehow she's trying to imply they're jealous? And that's weird, in an uncomfortable way.

[greenygal]

No, I'm pretty sure "jealous" is what she means by that, because she only says it about the wife. The daughter apparently only cares because the wife does. And both these interpretations are a "fact", despite not being backed up by anything in the letter. (As published, anyway, but that's the version we have to read.)

The fact that both the wife and daughter reacted so strongly is the only thing in the story that does strike me as worrying, since they might have heard details of the encounter that weren't in the letter.