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Jan. 14th, 2003 01:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
robbat2Ok, so I get on a Millenium line SkyTrain at Columbia, around 11.40pm Monday night. There are two other people in the car, a middle-aged asian female at one end, and a middle-aged male caucasian, seemingly white collar worker on the other. I'm sitting in the middle, minding my own business, reading a novel, absent-mindedly picking my nose and eating it like I do sometimes.
Just as that car comes into Sapperton station, the male stands up, moves toward the door and starts ranting at me about "how utterly disgusting picking my nose and eating it in a public place is". I tell him it is my right to do what I want, as it isn't doing anything to him. He responds with, "Fuck you man! FUCK YOU!" and gives me the finger. I return the gesture as he gets off the train which has now pulled into the station.
I believe I am right. If you find my personal behaviors off-putting, then don't look at me. I certianly didn't ask you to look at me, let alone criticize my behavior.
I don't do it in crowded place as it does make some people directly around me distinctly uncomfortable, but that is mainly because of the bio-hazardous nature of the material on my finger before I eat it.
Just as that car comes into Sapperton station, the male stands up, moves toward the door and starts ranting at me about "how utterly disgusting picking my nose and eating it in a public place is". I tell him it is my right to do what I want, as it isn't doing anything to him. He responds with, "Fuck you man! FUCK YOU!" and gives me the finger. I return the gesture as he gets off the train which has now pulled into the station.
I believe I am right. If you find my personal behaviors off-putting, then don't look at me. I certianly didn't ask you to look at me, let alone criticize my behavior.
I don't do it in crowded place as it does make some people directly around me distinctly uncomfortable, but that is mainly because of the bio-hazardous nature of the material on my finger before I eat it.
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Sorry, Tara
However, the mentality that something has always been taboo, because it is, so go with it negates the change and growth in a society.
Robin thinks that movie stars' new trend will be to pick their nose. Someday who has the biggest booger may be a status symbol, why is that any more or less arbuitrary than who has the thinest, highest heeled shoe?
It's only those people who dare to defy the status quo that get things moving, who become what we eventually call heros. It was taboo for a black woman to sit near the front of the bus, and to not make room for a white man. Rosa Parks said, "To fuck with that!"
Next summer, I'll ride with you around downtown on a public bus without our shirts, and if anyone looks or coments, we'll tell them we're hot. Or swim topless.
And I don't have a right to do whatever I damn well please, there are laws that govern a society, but in some cases whether or not what I'm doing is infringing on other people's rights. Do I have a right to make out with Robin in public? Do I have a right to smoke on a bus, where I'm affecting people's air quality? Do I have a right to pick crud out of my hair? To tap my fingernails in a repetively annoying way? Why is picking my nose and eating it a different catigory? Viva la snoze revolution!