There are some things that I might say to one person that might not be appropriately if said to another person. Like everyone else, my life has compartments. Something I might say to a college roommate would not be what I would say to a co-worker or someone I only saw in class or the cashier at the grocery store or the person who asks what I am looking for when I walk into a store and to whom I usually reply, "Just looking," in order to browse privately without feeling like someone is watching me or having to look at and consider their suggestions which are probably not what I want anyway, unlike my mother who would probably embarrass me by telling my whole life story to the store clerk and getting into too much personal territory as she often does.
However, when I was three years old there was this unfortunate incident when I and this other kid in the nursery department at church did this "You show me yours, I'll show you mine," thing. The ethnicity of the kids involved was never the issue. It was strictly a male-female thing. It was really stupid and embarrassing, obviously. It was wrong of me to do that. I never said that it was OK or tried to excuse myself later. Still, I think some people are just too overwrought about it to this day.
Original Sin: The story has traveled throughout the planet and various persons, especially Catholics, have hailed my arrival on the planet as something akin to the original sinner. I have been judged a sub-human species, a mental vegetable who was not healed after all of the effects of enchephalitis that I had when a baby, a dog, a monster, a creature of lesser value, an ignoble beast, etc. I think this level of superstitious regard and attention is a bit unwarranted. Am I the only sinner on the planet? Does my three-year-old misdeed make me a worse sinner than other persons who did not do this or did not initiate the incident? Some people are born sinners but perhaps no one else thought of actually doing that except me. So? Is there no forgiveness for a sin if I cannot quite recall and verbalize whatever made me think of doing that? In retrospect I would recommend using dogs and cats for this purpose. And what about all those other sins of omission and/or commission that everyone else commits and is never called to account for? Why should I be called to account for everything I ever did when it is yet not my time to die and my life has not yet passed before my eyes, even if some other people wish that I were already dead. Besides, I cannot afford to have my brain scanned without money in the bank so bug off and leave me be.
Private Sin: We snuck into the bathroom of the church nursery to do this misdeed and then were obviously seen making our escape, imagining ourselves undetected even as everyone working in the place knew of our guilt and eternal condemnation. Thus, everyone in authority can be expected to reenact this church nursery scenario ad nauseum because nobody knows how to turn off faucet. Ok, so does this mean that I can never have a private moment again in my entire lifetime? Everyone is conspiring against me to publicize everything that I ever say or do and comparing notes behind my back so that I cannot protect myself from information getting into the wrong hands and getting twisted and misused and everything going off in the wrong direction. Everyone assumes that I will continue to perpetrate similar misdeeds for the rest of my life as mindless automaton and no trust or confidence is placed in my judgments or thoughts of any kind. This means that I cannot have any real friends or any real success in a job when everyone will be undoing anything of benefit to me anyway. Why bother? My place in society is that of single-celled amoeba, a word that I might have used myself at times, unfortunately, only because they asked for it. If I can only live in private, then I ought to be looking for a residential nuthouse to pass the time because anyway I have no life.
