Unfiltered Story #267774

(I am autistic. Though I can generally manage myself, certain situations can make things harder for me. In particular, I’m very sensitive to loud environments; I have a lot of strategies to handle the ‘regular’ level of noise I expect to encounter in public places but if I’m having a bad day or it’s particularly loud I can get very stressed, sometimes to the point of becoming temporarily non-verbal. On this particular day I am travelling home on a very busy train after quite a long day; I’m feeling a bit on edge with all the people, but I’m handling it… until a group of teenage girls further down the carriage suddenly starts singing very loudly and quite off-key. I try and ignore it, figuring they’ll stop, but they keep going; I can feel myself getting worked up. I really don’t want to have a meltdown so I decide to say something:)

Me: Excuse me, but could you not sing?
(They get a bit giggly about being confronted, but:)
Girl: Uh, okay, sorry!

(I go back to minding my own business, but out of the corner of my eye I can see them giggling amongst themselves and whispering and periodically looking at me. After a few minutes and some nudging from one of the girls, one bursts out into VERY LOUD song while the others laugh, looking in my direction. Now I’m pretty fed up and quite stressed.)

Me: I’m autistic. This journey is stressful for me. You are making it worse.
(All giggling, and singing, stops.)
Girl: Oh my god, I’m so sorry. We didn’t know. We’ll stop!

(True to their word, they did stop, and each of them apologised to me again as they were getting off the train at their respective stops. They were just kids, and seemed very sincerely apologetic to have made my day harder once they knew, but… I hope they realise that they shouldn’t have been behaving that way, whether I was autistic or not!)