Social Criminal. That's right, I said it.

I had this friend a long time ago. Well, you know how Facebook works. We've reconnected. Well, he doesn't want me posting old photos of him online. I guess too many of his current friends are seeing them and he's embarrassed. I guess.

It got me thinking: are there photos out there that would embarrass me if someone posted them online? I don't think so. I don't think I'm embarrassed or ashamed of my past. And then I started thinking: what would be the most embarrassing thing my current social circles could find out about my past? What would be the most humiliating thing that could be exposed about me on social media?

Okay, I admit, there are millions of things that have happened to me over my lifetime that I do not remember. Some of them may even have photographic evidence. But there's one thing that really stands out as the most embarrassing thing from my past that could be made public. Something I don't have to look far to see. Here it is. This is a tattoo on my right forearm. It was done on purpose. And you thought tattoos hurt while they're being done.

Look out. At any moment I'm likely to do something so socially unacceptable as to be considered criminal by polite standards. I just might break some taboo when you least expect it. Or maybe not. The thing about a criminal is that he or she is identified as a criminal not for every one of their actions, but for the criminal ones. This doesn't mean everything they do is illegal, it just means that some of the things they do are. A car thief doesn't steal every car he sees. There just isn't time. Sometimes he doesn't want that car. Sometimes he CAN'T steal it. Well, a social criminal is unpredictable in that same way. He won't always be socially inappropriate, but when he is, look out, it's downright criminal how inappropriately he might act in a social situation.

Okay, so thinking this was a good idea is a pretty embarrassing part of my past. But I deserve it. I deserve to have to look at this any time I wear anything but a full-length sleeve. I deserve to have people notice it and say, "what does that say?" and then I have to show it to them. Yes, it's stupid. Yes, it's embarrassing. But if that's the price I have to pay for all the stupid things I was doing at that point in my life, I'll take it. I got off really easy.

So, like Fat Amy in the Pitch Perfect movies, I want to put this out there before some other c**t gets the chance. Most people get tattoos of pictures on their bodies. I have mostly words, phrases, an Arabic numeral. It's just how my brain works. It thinks in words, not so much in pictures.

So there it is, out there for the world to see and delight in. My most embarrassing thing. There's also this one photo of me that my dad loves, where I'm sitting in this chair in my bedroom with a cap on, and my long hair is freshly washed and extremely frizzy, and one patch on each side of my face is bleached to a lighter color, and I hate that photo. My bangs are poofed out in a mini afro under the cap's bill. It's awful. But I'd share it. I don't care. I just feel like it's part of me, part of who I am, and I can't run or hide from that. So, while I can't help but be embarrassed, I can suck it up and face it like a man. But not just any man. A Social Criminal of a man. Bleah.

Comments

  1. Minor HeroSeptember 21, 2017 at 2:43 PM

    Update:

    I was searching hashtags, just seeing what others might use the #socialcriminal hashtag for. I came across this 22-year-old in Nnewi, Nigeria, named Gideon. He is a trumpet player. This has led to the GoFundMe campaign "Trumpet for Gideon" with which I hope to collect enough money to buy a trumpet and ship it to Nigeria. At the moment it's looking like the shipping is the most expensive part. Let's come back around to this.

    ReplyDelete

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