Brian Jordan's texty thoughts

When you’re born, there is no such thing as embarrassment. There is just you, your parents,  the shit you see and the shit you pee. You do ridiculous things because you’re a kid, and because you just don’t know any “better”, you just don’t care.

Remember the videogame “Super Mario Brothers 2″? Oh… good game, good game. Ahead of its time.

My oldest brother Eric was *overjoyed* when it came out — he was engrossed by the flying carpets, the walking, talking radishes, and, of course, the two Italian plumbers jumping into poop sewers to collect spare change.

So when my mom asked my brother Eric to watch over me (a young, *helpless* baby), it’s no surprise that he would nod his head and say “yes”, “fine.”, then *immediately* go back to playing the game.

My mom wasn’t asking him to watch me for just any reason.

My mom was going to get the cleaning supplies.

My mom was going to clean up the poop the family dog had pooped on the stairwell.

She was afraid I might find it.

And find it I would.

My brother in the family room, my mother upstairs finding cleaning supplies, I hurtled my baby self towards whatever caught my interest. Ooh, a pacifier. Ooh, mommy and daddy. Ooh, a steaming pile of dog shit.

I didn’t just touch it.

I ate the shit out of it.

Mom comes down, finds me with dog shit smeared all over my face. I don’t remember how it tasted, but the memory certainly tastes funny.

And some people complain about eating sushi!

Moral of the story is: babies aren’t born embarrassed, they learn to be. They’re taught by their parents, they’re taught by their friends, they’re taught by the advertisements on TV and the teachers who advertise normalcy.

• Watching sesame street.
• Whipping your dick out to pee.
• Having acne.
• Saying the word “underpants” in public.
• Throwing up.
• Crying.

We are taught to avoid, to steer clear, to run as fast as possible away from embarrassment, because it supposedly means something.

How embarrassing, society. How self-referential. How normalizing, sensitizing, de-democratizing, hyper-politicizing, seemingly right but oh-so-wrong.

Stop it.

You’re embarrassing me.

No comments? Might be some elsewhere: cross-posted via web on my Posterous here.