How do you respond when people ask you if you are ret*d ?

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I live with my mom and I walk her dog. I had an incident about four months ago, in which the neighbor across the street called the police on me, because he did not like that I unintentionally let the dog sniff him. The dog is very friendly, and likes to go up to people, and sniff people. This guy was on his lawn, and I was walking the dog with a leash, and the dog went on his lawn a little bit, and sniffed him. The guy did not say anything to me at the time. However, he called the police, and lied to them and told them he was attacked, and had to use his bicycle to defend himself, and he told the police that I am ret*d.

Here is what happened when the policeman interviewed me:

Police: "There was an incident between your dog and someone yesterday".

Me: "Well, there was a guy on a bike at the park but it was not an incident; he rode out of our path".

Police: "No. Your dog attacked someone".

Me: "Nooo?".

Police: "Someone says he was attacked by your dog".

Me: "Who?"

Police: "Your neighbor".

Me: "Not that I know of".

Police: "Are you ret*d?"

Me: [Bewildered not sure how to answer] and I don't respond

Police: Pauses then asks again, "Are you ret*d?"

Me: "No, are you ret*d?" [I ask out of anger, due to being laughed at all my life because of learning disabilities. I later regret this juvenile response].

Police: Pauses again and states, "Your neighbor says you are ret*d ".

Me: I think how can I respond?? I don't want to talk about my ASD, then maybe I am suppose to confirm that I am ret*d ?? So, I don't respond. I feel unsettled from my earlier emotional angry retort to the policeman.

Police: Long pause, and walks around and states, "I need to know if you are ret*d".

Me: "I can walk the dog along a path that does not go near the guy's house".

Police: "That will work".

Then my mom pulls in with her car and she speaks to the policeman. This incident caused me months of angst. I kept replaying it in my head over and over. One night my mom heard me verbalizing everything and woke up and asked me if everything was OK.

How do you respond when people ask you if you are ret*d or the equivalent?

Last edited by LoveNotHate on 29 Nov 2013, 9:35 pm, edited 4 times in total.

THE POLICE ARE MOST DEFINATELY ret*d.

People sometimes have creative ways of asking if you're ret*d.

I was interviewed/assessed by a PhD for DSHS a few months ago. She asked me, "Were you in remedial classes as a youngster?" I told her no. That was her way of finding out, I guess.

Bear in mind that this is not an appropriate response when a police officer is asking you, but if someone were to ask me if I was ret*d I would flip them the bird. They would either realize that (a) I am not ret*d or (b) would continue to think that I am ret*d and would thus not be worth my time.

Some years ago I was walking my mother's dog and a couple of dogs ran towards us from a neighbor's house and snarled and snapped at our feet. I stood my ground and told the couple to leash their dogs. They made some comment that I was walking too close to their property. I replied (somewhat sarcastically) that the footpath is public property to which they responded acidly if I thought I was a lawyer?

A few days later we got a visit from the cops asking why I had taken my dog into their property and excited their dogs who left the compound? I was very careful to precisely mention what happened. I told the police these people lied in order to prevent me from complaining about their dogs attacking us without a leash. The police understood and nothing further happened.

My experience with police is that so long as you don't lose your temper with them and be reasonable they will usually be helpful (at least the ones here in Australia). I think the OP should not have lost her temper as I think the police officer was (somewhat naively) repeating what the neighbor told them.

The trouble with the question, "Are you ret*d?" is figuring out whether they mean, "Do you have an intellectual disability?" or whether they mean, "You're acting like you're stupid and I want to insult you by implying that you have an intellectual disability."

If they are asking in the first sense, I'll probably answer, "No; I'm autistic." I may follow up by asking if I'm being dense about something, because things often do fly over my head.

If they're asking in the second sense, I'll be properly insulted, but I'm not going to try to educate somebody who's using "ret*d" as such a blatant insult. If I figure out that they're insulting me in time to reply, I might respond, "Do you have a problem with that?" Because who cares whether I have an ID or not; they deserve to be called out for being jackasses.

I think neighbors can be terribly difficult. Seems unlikely to me that police were insulting the OP, that would be cruel, and very provocative. I think OP can get away with distress, but nothing aggressive, won't work with police.

Was thinking that too.

Every single occasion that Ive ever heard the phrase "are you ret*d?"(and have heard it a number of times-not always addressed to me, but often to me) it was always uttered as a retorical (unreal) question masking an insult to the person being addressed, and their intellect. In fact thats probably the first time Ive ever read or heard about someone using the phrase "are you ret*d?" as an actual request for clinical information about the person being addressed. So I would have taken it as an insult as well. Unless the other person said the three words in just the right tone and intonation perhaps.

But you cant loose your temper with the cops. Just cant do that.

So the best you can do is say "excuuuse me?" if any official askes you that question. That will force them to repeat it and explain it so you can be sure that its an actual question, and not an insult.

In that situation I would have just answered no. Anyone else, I would say yes just to mess with them unless it was just a curious question and there was no bad intent behind it.

I wouldn't slam the door in their face, but I proverbially would. In this case, I would've informed the police they have no way of knowing firsthand whose dog is in question and that they should see to the person who was bitten, as well as citing the person who provided them with false/exaggerated information.

Not only were your neighbors douchebag's, the police were to, not only that but also disrespectful and unprofessional.
No one uses that therm "ret*d" any longer, unless the intention being to offense someone. As a police he should have known
how insulting that word is, and the fact that he used it against you so many times, makes me quite angry. NOT OK!
If someone said that to me i would have in a calm manner said "First and foremost, the word ret*d were cut out as a medical therm a long time ago, they use other words now, such as mentally disabled or intellectually disabled . Nowadays that word is considered to be an insult, so the fact that you so bluntly ask if i am a ret*d is quite offensive to me. But if you absolutely need an answer to your question, the answer is no, i am not."

"Mental retardation" is still in use, actually. As of the DSM-5, it'll be changed, but the final switch doesn't happen until January. In my state, the government agency providing services for autistic and intellectually disabled people is still called MRDD--the department of mental retardation and developmental disabilities.

The words people use don't matter very much. How they treat you matters much more. Older people especially don't tend to keep up with the euphemism treadmill--the words they're using might have been quite polite twenty years ago, and they just haven't changed their habits.

The cop in the OP seems to have been using outdated language to ask a sensible question--he needed to know whether you had an intellectual disability because the neighbor had told him that you did, and he needed to know if he had to simplify what he was saying to you. Or maybe he thought that you had a guardian that he should talk to instead of you.

The only time was when my friend was very frustrated with me and said "c'mon, Rich, you're not ret*d!" and my response was, "50 years ago there was no such diagnosis as ADHD. My diagnosis would have been as "mildly ret*d," so, yes, I am." (At that point I was still unaware of my ASD symptoms.) He paused and thought about it for a moment and didn't really say anything, but looked like he had learned something from it and his frustration with whatever it was I had done/not done that pissed him off completely dissipated.

Well i was pointing to the fact that retardation isn't a medically accepted/approved term any longer.. At least not in medically updated countries nor in states/countries that values equality/human rights.

Never had it happen, but...:

"I could be, yeah. Nothing wrong with that."

That is disgraceful, the word 'ret*d' in relation to mental health issues/disability hasn't been used in the UK for years. I'm shocked that somebody in a position of authority would use such a term. I'm sorry that you had to suffer that kind of ignorance Lovenothate.

Not that I'm suggesting you do this, but how good would it be if your ignorant neighbour woke up to find "No, I'm not ret*d you bigot!" burned into his front lawn with weedkiller! Just imagining that makes me feel better anyway.