Belligerance is an early symptom of Alzheimers Disease.
As another mentioned......be glad you don't have to live with him.
As the disease progresses, their personality may yet change again.
Often they become passive.............

..........however, belligerance does happen in the beginning...........
causing family members to wonder what is going on.

It's also common in dementia. Not all, but it does happen.

This encounter had to be shocking. This man is "sick"(for sure) to behave in such a manner in a public place. Unfortunately, for the man, sooner or later he will run into a person who will not handle his behavior in a "graceful" manner.

Gracie is easy to love and I suppose that is one reason why so many came to her rescue. But what annoys me is that so many of the 98% of allegedly friendly people who live in The Villages are very opinionated and judgmental and hence unfair.

My first thought after reading Gracie's post was why this fellow had become angry? My second thought was , was it justified?

We have a stream of people exiting between tables while other people are eating. Was there another means of exiting? If not should Katie Bell's shoulder the blame?

In short I think many of you rushed to judgment in your effort to protect Gracie and without knowing or giving the benefit of the doubt to this fellow and the situation at hand.

Finally it is unrealistic to believe and expect that because someone lives in The villages that they are required to be happy or friendly 24/7 to think otherwise is to ignored the limits of nature.

The sick man probably isn't even aware of his outbursts "if indeed he is suffering from dementia and or Alzehimers Disease". I've seen it in action, believe me. It puzzles family members and others who witness these outbursts for no good reason.....as Gracie did.

I'm just saying it was a possibility.

When I was younger and we still had the A&P market in our town, I remember being totally puzzled when a nice middle aged man would take his aging mother grocery shopping every week.......he was so patient with her, even when she would start cursing in the produce aisle.

I'm certain it was embarrassing for him........but those incidents and then later when we also experienced various people we knew and loved with Alzheimers and dementia.......I understood. I understand now.

The personality changes from belligerance to passivity and sometimes back again. Probably "inside of them" they are frustrated with these changes and outbursts. I'm not a doctor; all I know is what I've observed. We saw many wonderful people, including retired military people, teachers, engineers, you name it, from every walk of life .......develop totally different personalities.......when we'd visit my mom in the Alzheimers wing at the very end of her long journey.

These had been upstanding folks in our town. So, no one really knows for sure, myself included, why people have these outbursts. It's also hard on the families.

...

You well may be right. I followed the leader who walked between the tables and as I said we weren't forced to move sideways or hesitate, there was room to walk. It could have been any number of things and it could be that Katie Belles expects a crowd and justifiably do want to make money and puts the tables closer together than they might optimally be.

At any rate, I personally would NEVER have done what he did. I personally have never witnessed such an intense and unexpected outburst and I personally would never in any way excalate it. We left. Period.

I have always believed that when behavior falls outside expected parimeters it isn't normal. But my expectations are different than some.

No harm came to anyone. We all continued on with our day. I appreciate your kind support but as Rubicon says, who knows why this happened?

Good one, Posh!!!!

I couldn't agree more. All of us have had unfortunate encounters like this...unless we live in a cave...and of course they're upsetting events. But our quickness to judge another person from one sad event and even "diagnose" a significant and tragic illness from a distance is inappropriate.

Since becoming a "Village Person," I've become impressed by the number of really nice people who call this wonderful place their home....even part-time. It's easy to make new friends, and Judy & I are making many, I'm happy to say. Most people seem happy and content, perhaps because they're largely retired and now live in a lovely place (it sure ain't the water!!!).

In any distribution of people, even those living in a great place, there will be some unhappy souls, sometimes just on occasion. Maybe this guy was just having a bad day! Drawing such harsh and frightening conclusions without knowing more is just not right.

Shirley MacLaine once said, "Dwelling on the negative simply contributes to its power."

Ah, spoken like a true two percenter! Rubicon, it was you wasn't it? :1rotfl: (light-hearted chiding)

What may have been justified would be a comment to the exiting group that they were bothering the diners. What is not justified is to pull out a chair to block their path, then repeat the action when the chair was pushed back in. What if one of them fell over the chair?

We don't know if there was an alternate path to exit. But would there have been permanent harm in letting the ladies pass and then doing something to make that path less desirable?

No one expects everyone to be happy/friendly 24/7, but it isn't unreasonable to expect them to be civil and not confrontational.

Just my $0.02.

I'm surprised this post has gone 5 pages. The guy got unjustifiably upset because his breakfast was disturbed. He probably regretted it afterwords, especially after his wife probably gave him hell and it was no big deal.
Don't we all once in a while say something we regret? Even do something that seems foolish after we think about it later? Life will go on.