"As people age, they become more like themselves". My gerontologist friend introduced me to that concept decades ago, and there is a lot of wisdom in it.
What that means basically is that when we're young(er) for the most part we have the ability to present the face that we WANT to present, to the world. Someone may feel seething anger inside over some real or imagined word or deed by another, but mostly we grit our teeth, give that person a cold smile and wisely remove ourselves from the situation. However as age starts wearing on us so too do our coping skills start to diminish as well as emotional control, often exacerbated by things like family or money issues, alcohol, chronic disease, beginning dementia, etc. We can no longer hide the person we've carefully kept hidden all those decades. He (or she) gradually starts peeking out, more and more often, and quite often incidents like the one in the OP happen.
I'm not saying this was the case in the incident described in the OP. But we're a town of 150,000 (give or take) geezers. So yes. In such a concentration incidents like this WILL happen. Best thing to do is precisely what the person being verbally attacked did. Leave. Don't escalate.
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