I had a bit of a situation Saturday night and I want to get the board’s take on how I handled it, sort of like those Reddit “Am I the asshole?” deals.
For context, I’m in my mid-50s and I’ve been a season ticket holder for more than 20 years. I’ve got seats in section F right on the aisle between F and G. We are there literally every week and we stay for the entire game. My daughter is finishing up grad school at Ole Miss and recently got engaged to an outstanding young man. My future son-in-law graduated from Northwestern State in Louisianna two years ago and grew up an LSU fan. Since he and my daughter started dating a couple of years ago, he’s been to a number of games with us and has become an Ole Miss fan but as you might guess he’s pulling for LSU when they play us. Me, my wife, my daughter, and future son-in-law were at the game Saturday night. My son is a Sophomore and was sitting in the student section.
There is a lady in probably her late 50s who has had the seats immediately in front of us for a couple years. I think this is her second year there, but it could be year 3. She’s there most of the time and rotates on who uses her other three tickets. This week she had two guys in their early 30s and one girl who was probably late 20s. I didn’t know it at the time, but its her son, daughter, and daughter’s boyfriend.
My son-in-law was wearing one of those Rhoback polos that have the outline of the state of Louisiana on them, not some purple pimp suit and Mardi Gras beads. He wasn’t doing anything to draw attention to himself as we sat through pregame or the first quarter. When LSU scored to make it 14-7, he said at roughly conversational level “Go Tigers”. He wasn’t standing up and screaming or anything like that. If you weren’t within 6-8 feet of him, I doubt you could even hear him. The woman in front of us turned to him and yelled “You need to shut the f*** up”. Son-in-law responds “Ma’am?”. She started on a tirade that I can’t quote verbatim but included things like you’re at Ole Miss, you need to get the f*** out of here, these aren’t even your seats, my son played golf at Ole Miss, I paid $12,000 for these seats (seriously, WTF?) , you better shut the f*** up, etc. Son-in-law said something to the effect of “Ma’am I’m just here to watch the game, and I’m just cheering like you are.“ Her kids just sort ducked their heads and weren’t making any real effort to stop her.
I didn’t say anything for the first little bit of the exchange, but for full disclosure, I despise mean people and bullies, and I could feel my temper building. At some point I said, at quite a bit louder than conversational volume, “Everyone slide down and let me sit behind that bitch”. At that point, she shut up and her son started working to calm her down. I sat down behind her and didn’t say anything. Some guy across the aisle in G stood up and started yelling at me that I had no right to talk to a woman that way. I stepped into the aisle at the hand rail and said “I don’t think you heard how she’s talking to my family. If she won’t start no shit, won’t be no shit”. Then he starts yelling at me that I was a disgrace and that I should shut the f*** up. When I told him that I didn’t think I would, he literally gritted his teeth and started saying “let’s go, motherf***er, right now.” He had spit flying everywhere. The guy that has been sitting behind me for years stepped in and everyone sat back down. The whole thing was just surreal.
The son turned around to apologize. She’s his Mom, she’s been drinking all day, he was going get her out of there at half time, he was very sorry, etc. He was a really nice young man and I felt really bad for him. He wound up buying my son-in-law a beer and the rest of the night was awesome with no more drama.
My wife understood my reaction but she thinks I should have tried to de-escalate the situation instead of confronting her as strongly as I did. In the moment, I wasn’t interested in de-escalating anything. I think the quickest way to shut a bully down is to confront them head on, and I have no problem making it awkward. The fact that she saw it slightly differently than I did, and some dude in section G was willing to fight me over it has me questioning how I handled it.
Am I the asshole?
For context, I’m in my mid-50s and I’ve been a season ticket holder for more than 20 years. I’ve got seats in section F right on the aisle between F and G. We are there literally every week and we stay for the entire game. My daughter is finishing up grad school at Ole Miss and recently got engaged to an outstanding young man. My future son-in-law graduated from Northwestern State in Louisianna two years ago and grew up an LSU fan. Since he and my daughter started dating a couple of years ago, he’s been to a number of games with us and has become an Ole Miss fan but as you might guess he’s pulling for LSU when they play us. Me, my wife, my daughter, and future son-in-law were at the game Saturday night. My son is a Sophomore and was sitting in the student section.
There is a lady in probably her late 50s who has had the seats immediately in front of us for a couple years. I think this is her second year there, but it could be year 3. She’s there most of the time and rotates on who uses her other three tickets. This week she had two guys in their early 30s and one girl who was probably late 20s. I didn’t know it at the time, but its her son, daughter, and daughter’s boyfriend.
My son-in-law was wearing one of those Rhoback polos that have the outline of the state of Louisiana on them, not some purple pimp suit and Mardi Gras beads. He wasn’t doing anything to draw attention to himself as we sat through pregame or the first quarter. When LSU scored to make it 14-7, he said at roughly conversational level “Go Tigers”. He wasn’t standing up and screaming or anything like that. If you weren’t within 6-8 feet of him, I doubt you could even hear him. The woman in front of us turned to him and yelled “You need to shut the f*** up”. Son-in-law responds “Ma’am?”. She started on a tirade that I can’t quote verbatim but included things like you’re at Ole Miss, you need to get the f*** out of here, these aren’t even your seats, my son played golf at Ole Miss, I paid $12,000 for these seats (seriously, WTF?) , you better shut the f*** up, etc. Son-in-law said something to the effect of “Ma’am I’m just here to watch the game, and I’m just cheering like you are.“ Her kids just sort ducked their heads and weren’t making any real effort to stop her.
I didn’t say anything for the first little bit of the exchange, but for full disclosure, I despise mean people and bullies, and I could feel my temper building. At some point I said, at quite a bit louder than conversational volume, “Everyone slide down and let me sit behind that bitch”. At that point, she shut up and her son started working to calm her down. I sat down behind her and didn’t say anything. Some guy across the aisle in G stood up and started yelling at me that I had no right to talk to a woman that way. I stepped into the aisle at the hand rail and said “I don’t think you heard how she’s talking to my family. If she won’t start no shit, won’t be no shit”. Then he starts yelling at me that I was a disgrace and that I should shut the f*** up. When I told him that I didn’t think I would, he literally gritted his teeth and started saying “let’s go, motherf***er, right now.” He had spit flying everywhere. The guy that has been sitting behind me for years stepped in and everyone sat back down. The whole thing was just surreal.
The son turned around to apologize. She’s his Mom, she’s been drinking all day, he was going get her out of there at half time, he was very sorry, etc. He was a really nice young man and I felt really bad for him. He wound up buying my son-in-law a beer and the rest of the night was awesome with no more drama.
My wife understood my reaction but she thinks I should have tried to de-escalate the situation instead of confronting her as strongly as I did. In the moment, I wasn’t interested in de-escalating anything. I think the quickest way to shut a bully down is to confront them head on, and I have no problem making it awkward. The fact that she saw it slightly differently than I did, and some dude in section G was willing to fight me over it has me questioning how I handled it.
Am I the asshole?
Last edited:
