A Minor Incident

Honestly, I don’t give a shit if someone saw me drop a hot dog and then eat it anyway. Ten Second Rule, bro! And these days, there are so many cameras in public places that it’s safe to assume that someone saw you do something. Or everything. If people I will never meet or care about are using my actions as a punchline to bolster their own fragile self-esteem, at exactly what point am I supposed to give a shit?

When I was a baby, my mom had me in my stroller in the mall and got me a Mrs. Field’s cookie, which was a big deal for her at the time because my parents didn’t have much money. She handed me the cookie, and of course I immediately dropped it on the mall floor. I was a baby. My motor skills were still developing. (I can’t use that excuse for my clumsiness anymore...) She was conflicted, but she didn’t have the money for another cookie, and baby me really wanted that damn cookie. So she picked it up off the mall floor and gave it to me. Then she stood up and saw two older women just glaring at her and pointedly whispering about the kind of woman who would feed a cookie that had been on the ground at the mall to her baby. My mom felt like shit. She still feels guilty about it to this day. And I survived the mall floor germs, thank you very much, terrible judgmental older women.