The specifics if the incident seem less important to me at the moment. All the possibilities for why this person was uncomfortable are just a factor. I feel like I want to argue that I wasn’t some stranger, I was a classmate and peer in a class of 20 or so students. We had conversation in class before, I don’t know.

But I think what I am trying to talk about is about the general social “code”. What I think is:

Each person is responsible for their actions and how they treat the other. If you treat someone poorly, you’ve treated them poorly. In some cases that may be more justified, but it’s not that they “made you do it”.

Each individual is responsible for how they are feeling and setting their own boundaries in an interaction (even if it’s just some stranger on the bus).

There is shared responsibility in misunderstandings.

I can think of my own interactions with a classmate that made me uncomfortable. She talked a lot and made some pretty gross sounds eating in class. But in no way did I ever treat her less than or rudely because I felt uncomfortable. I didn’t see it or make it to be her fault for me feeling that way, it was something going on inside of me and my thing to deal with. If she wanted to talk after class, it was my job to say “I’ve got to get going, I’ll see you next Tuesday”. I didn’t want her to feel ashamed of herself just because I personally didn’t like her. I didn’t shun her, especially when I knew it was already difficult for her to be vulnerable. That’s the last thing anyone needs. Sure, I didn’t want to be friends with her, but she deserved my respect just as a fellow human being.