If it clears things up in my world retarded! = disabled.

I get what you’re saying, but unfortunately we don’t live in your world, we live in the real world, where the term “mental retardation” was historically used to refer to intellectual disability, and has since been weaponized against disabled people and is used as a negative slur all the time.

I understand that you used it without harmful intent, but what I am trying to express to you is that it doesn’t matter what your intent was, much like the n-word, the word has baggage and causes real world harm, and further marginalizes some of the most marginalized people in society.

Please, have some compassion, just choose to use some other word or turn of phrase instead, is it really that hard?