I was just sitting at the mall taking a break from mall walking. A man walked over to me when I wasn’t even looking up. He said "I haven’t seen you here before. " I said I wasn’t really here to talk to people and got up and walked away. He said he would leave, he may even have said sorry. I said I was ready to leave anyway. In retrospect I think he may have just been slightly mentally challenged so I wish I had been a little softer, he did not turn out to be aggressive. Looking for suggestions on something still clear and firm but more polite? This scared me for some reason, I think how fast he walked up and sat down near me.
Editing to add a key detail, he sat down close to me which is probably what made me more nervous than I would have otherwise been. I appreciate all the thoughtful feedback I’ve gotten and interesting discussion.
I know I have watched videos about this also, that people say they are not approached or feel like they can’t approach others. My thing is body language and eye contact, if I’m out walking around making eye contact and we exchange a hello and see if more occurs fine. But if someone is totally closed off looking away… take the hint. And like dear lord don’t sit down without being invited to ! Chat a minute and ask first.
Sadly, some of us are unable to ‘take a hint’ as it doesn’t seem like a hint. Not everybody is wired to pick up on small contextual cues and may only notice the big ones; being in a public shopping mall (historically a pretty social location) while not shopping, implies to my brain a desire to be around people, even if you aren’t there for the buildings intended purpose. It’s definitely fine that your intention wasn’t to be social, I don’t desire to be social and try to avoid places with people like the plague.
I don’t think he did anything wrong either though; the few mall walkers I’ve known almost consider it a sport so I get why he would say those exact words (not seeing you during their usual meetup time, he was likely inviting you to walk with their group).