“Projection” or not, I’m at least worthy of pocket pool.

One of the many downfalls of being insecure and unhappy with yourself is that you tend to take everyday occurrences that are really unrelated to you in any way, and convince yourself that something about your pathetic self has caused them. Or you misinterpret people’s actions or words to mean something completely different than what was intended. I think this phenomenon is referred to as “projection” (“a psychological defense mechanism whereby one "projects" one's own undesirable thoughts, motivations, desires, and feelings onto someone else.” Wikipedia)

For example; the other day an automatic door didn’t open for me and I took it personally. There’s no way that sensor wasn’t tripped by my larger than average frame, so my immediate thought was that the door had somehow gained the capacity for higher thinking and had decided that if anyone needed to exert the extra effort to open a door it was me.

I mean how crazy is that thinking and yet that’s what my mind comes up with. I even contemplated on the damn door’s inner monologue; “That gal should burn some calories pushing something – something besides pushing more food in her mouth, that’s for sure.” There was even a laugh track playing after that in my head!

So now that you’re somewhat familiar with what goes on in my head, let me recount a little something that happened to me yesterday, and I have to apologize to the people who had to listen to me obsess about it then.

I’m walking down the aisle at work and walking towards me is a man. I don’t know who he is, I’ve seen him before but he doesn’t work in my department – just on the same floor. Anyway, as he’s walking towards me he reaches down and does the most obvious rearrangement of his balls that he possibly could have done. I mean there was absolutely no effort to conceal the fact that he was grabbing his package, jostling it and bringing it to rest in what was obviously a more comfortable position. I’ve seen guys be more discreet when whacking themselves off, than this guy was at adjusting his jewels.

Now he wasn’t looking me in the eye or anything as the act was taking place. This wasn’t some overt sexual harassment issue. But he had to have seen me walking towards him, sized me up and determined that he had no qualms about grabbing his genitals in my presence. The man obviously found me so unattractive that he didn’t mind grabbing himself in front of me. If Claudia Schiffer was walking down the aisle towards him I think he would have managed to postpone shifting his rocks at least until she had passed by even if his left testicle was twisted so tightly in his undies that there was a danger of it falling off. But doing it in front of me was no different than scratching his ass in front of a dog. Why conceal such disgusting behavior in front of someone he deemed as equally as disgusting and therefore didn’t care about impressing?

This was the thinking that permeated my entire day yesterday. This isn’t healthy behavior. I mean the man was probably just a pig. Maybe he grabs himself in front of everyone. Maybe he was having a herpes outbreak and needed a good scratch, maybe he’s part of a test group for athletic protective cups, maybe he has a fetish for incredibly tight underwear, who knows! But it’s taken me an entire day to convince myself that I am at least worthy of a pocket pool genital adjustment, and the next time I see him in the hallway I might just tell him that.