Encounter with a Guardian Douchebag

Yesterday I was on the escalator at the Porter Square station, when a man passing on my left looked me in the eye and said “Don’t bite your nails.”

Well this rather pissed me off. It’s the way I’m sure smokers feel, when everyone (even complete strangers) are always telling them to quit, that smoking is bad for them. As if they’d been hiding under a rock for the past 20 years (and in that case, who has been bringing them cigarettes?).

Back to the anti-nail-biter guy. Did he think he was some kind of guardian douchebag, here to change my life forever and deliver me from this miserable existence with one well-timed comment? That’s a heady assumption, Guardian Douchebag, considering the complexity of the world we live in, and the fact that you have zero context for who I am and why I happen to be biting my nails on the Porter station escalator.

Here’s the kicker: Guardian Douchebag was definitely eff ay tee FAT. You tell me not to bite my nails — what, am I going to come up to you and tell you to go for a jog? No I would not, because that would be unhelpful and frankly insulting, wouldn’t it? Also, biting my nails is hardly going to kill me, but you on the other hand are a few Big Macs short of a cardiac episode.

The same kind of thing happened to me on a greyhound bus once. A man in a burnt orange suit asked me “You chew on da finger?” and then insisted that I needed Jesus in my life to help me stop. I wasn’t sure how Jesus would help the situation, or if He’d told that man to wear that orange suit, but goddamn that was an uncomfortable bus ride.

Strangers need to stop trying to get their self-righteous do-gooder points by telling me what I may or may not chew on. Just give money to a bum if you want to feel morally superior.