Tie your shoe laces and tell a bad joke!

I was walking to my local shop to get a couple of things, and I noticed on the other side of the busy road, wanting to cross, was a young 20 something year old girl (I say girl cos our brains don’t fully mature until around 24ish…lol). She decided to cross the road on a corner with whizzing traffic buzzing by. She saw her opportunity and took it. She ran frantically across the road. She had some speed up but in my mind’s eye it all went into terrible slow motion as to my horror I noticed her shoelace was untied.

Each thundering step slowed right down in my vision to a fumbling mess and as I witnessed her foot hit the ground the untied lace teased and tossed and threatened to end her charge by bouncing below the shoe and out again and under and out again. I could almost hear the whipping sound of it hitting the tarmac as she ran. I was frozen waiting for her footfalls to safely make it to the curb. Which she did…..only just.
I hastened my pace to catch up with her ahead of me. I said, ‘excuse me love, your shoelace is untied’. ‘She looked startled and bewildered. She stared at me blankly. I repeated, ‘your shoe lace is untied, my heart was in my mouth there watching you run across the road and your lace was dancing dangerously close to a trip up! Can you please do it up otherwise I won’t be able to sleep tonight having visions of you face-planting and scraping off all the beautiful skin from your face!’ LOL

Needless to say, she thought I was crazy and proceeded to bend down and do up her lace. Whether it was just the shock of being stopped or the vision of her imagined gravel rash after a possible fall my intervention seemed to do the trick. I walked on resolved that I had saved a life and done my good deed for the day.

Not more than 30 metres down the road I came upon another girl who had one lace fully undone!!! I couldn’t believe it!
I said ‘hey, just letting you know, your shoelace is undone’ she looked through me and said (with all the surety of a fool who knows everything ‘I know’. And kept walking!!! WTFF!!

Is this some new trend? Living on the edge, at any given moment living with the thrill of a possible face-plant?
Man! Weird! Is it a fashion thing the youngins are doing?
If it is, it is super dumb….lol

This very teenage approach to life got me thinking about how if I had stopped either of these girls in the street and asked them to play a ‘word at a time’ game with me (a popular improv warm up exercise) they would have probably refused fearing the embarrassment of doing something ‘weird’ in public. However, the possible scenario of face-planting on a busy road with onlookers was an embarrassment worth risking (probably in the name of fashion or the ‘I’m not bothered’ nonchalance of young-hip-cool Gen Zs) ….LOL.

Why do peeps risk incredible physical harm but not the social embarrassment of ‘looking silly’, or ‘looking dumb’, ‘saying something embarrassing’ or ‘saying something offensive’.

People will do all sorts of things to avoid embarrassment! Especially social embarrassment.

As I get older, I am kinda the opposite, I am more avoidant of physical harm than mental, emotional or social reputational harm. I think part of that is realising how important your physical health is and if you lose that then it affects every aspect of your life!
However, I relish any opportunity to embarrass myself socially! As some of you may already know, I have a theory: I try to embarrass myself at least once a day so I can become impervious to embarrassment- because the one who can be embarrassed and be ok with it truly wins the game of life and the prize of true freedom.

We can build a cage for ourselves through others’ judgements. We become scared to risk, scared to fail and scared to not be accepted and liked. And most of the times the risks we are most scared of won’t even give us painful gravel rash!! LOL

Unfortunately, I see a trend of people avoiding social, emotional, mental embarrassment at the detriment of their character and resilience.
If you want to be unstoppable, unbeatable and unflappable then get used to being ok with embarrassment and with not being liked or always approved of by others. People spend a lot less time thinking about you than you think. Lol.

Also, those who need to be liked sacrifice being respected in the long run.

So please, go forth and embarrass thyself!

Preferably not by face-planting on the road cos you’re a dumbass who needs to tie your laces …..LOL.
Get those priorities right peeps! Safe body. Risky mind!

Go out there with your shoelaces tied and risk telling a dumb joke!

May the cringe be with you!

Lindsay. x

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