One of my all-time favorite past times is people watching. I KNOW this is a favorite past time for a lot of people in this world. I actually do it to compare myself with others. Not a good thing I know, but I do it anyways. One of my favorite stories is one from when I was living in California. I was walking down the street, not really paying attention, when I hear someone screaming. At first I thought it could have been someone in distress. But it was not, it was actually a guy yelling at nothing. The people around him just briefly looked and then looked away as if it was a normal thing. But I was hooked. What was this guy yelling at? He was saying “GET AWAY FROM ME!” but there was no one there. This is a time when I really remember thinking how interesting it was to watch people.
Although that event grabbed my attention, I intentionally watch people when they don’t think they are being watched. I know it sounds creepy, but it is very entertaining. Little kids are always funny. My nephew is always fighting bad guys when we are at the store, and I have seen little girls before playing with imaginary friends in the checkout line at the store. Kids don’t usually care about too much in life, and making a fool of themselves in public is one of those things. My favorite and most entertaining ages to watch is the age group of 13-26ish people, specifically the male gender. Let me explain; in middle school it is a time for this age group to change from ‘baby’ to ‘teenager’ and sometimes this change can be humorous. Then you get the high school aged kids (yes, they are still kids) and they are stuck between the title of ‘teenager’ and ‘adult.’ This is usually my favorite age to watch because the know-it-all teenagers don’t know much at all.
My favorite gender to watch is boys. They are all the same, even when they think they are different. I was at work a few months ago when a kid came in to meet up with his friends, this kid had a defined strut, a look of self-approval, and his clothes told me he was trying to grab some attention. He was dressed nice, but all of his clothes said either ‘Hollister’ or ‘Abercrombie’ on them. Now, I too wear these clothes sometimes. So I am not saying it is a bad thing. But he was very proud that he spent a fortune on a shirt I could have gotten for about $5. These few things grabbed my attention, I had to watch. He definitely thought highly of himself, he would even do the ‘half smile’ because he was too cool to show his teeth when laughing at a joke. When he left with his friends a few minutes later, he walked out with his same defined strut and his hoodie halfway on his head to look cool. As he walked out of that store, all I could think was “Guys are very strange.”
After that happened I decided that I would focus my people watching skills on guys, specifically high school age guys. Let me switch subjects for a little bit; we all want to be noticed, I sure do. People want to be accepted in this world, some people even want to just stand out. Some people want to blend in and some people want to go against the grain. But we all actually follow each other. Take high school for example; I hated high school, I tried to stay hidden, it worked for the most part. But there comes a time when a guy feels like he needs to impress his peers, especially girls. So he conforms to the life of expensive clothing, excessive exercise, joining some sport just to be labeled a jock. I did not do that myself, but I have conformed to the clothing thing, I do like to wear nice clothes. What is funny about this whole thing is, even years after high school you can tell who these people are. I was shopping with a good friend of mine and her husband this past week, and we decided to go into Abercrombie & Fitch. There were greeters at the doors. Both of the guys there were a perfect example of how men don’t grow up. Superficial is the best way to describe them. If you have seen the movie or read the book Beastly then you will understand what I am trying to get across. Life, to them, is all about getting laid or getting rich. I wish I could say that guys grow out of this… sorry, they don’t.
I have a friend I met in California who is a lot like this. What is annoying about him is no matter what it is, he is an expert. Unfortunately, he is really good at everything too. Some people are just gifted that way. But the real annoyance is the fact that he has kind of a dull personality, but everyone we met loved him right off. He could have just sat through the whole conversation with someone and not said a word, but the person we were visiting with fell in love with him. I guess you can call it jealousy; he does not have to try to get people to like him. When I, on the other hand, have to hang around a person for hours before they really get to know who I am and they like me. Or they say they like me…
I am not exactly sure why I wrote this post, maybe I am just throwing down some observations I have made. I think it would be nice to have people look around and see what type of person they are. Are you superficial? Are you eccentric? Are you conceded? Or maybe you’re depressed, or you have low self-esteem, or maybe you’re just happy being the way you are. To me it does not matter because if you become a victim of my game, I will always laugh at you. People do the dumbest things, so just be happy with who you are and remember you can always have the last laugh, because people who put themselves on a pedestal are asking for the criticism.
Dr.K
(Song: For Your Entertainment , Artist: Adam Lambert)
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