Society is heavy on curiosity. It’s what moves the creation of life changing, and life saving products, while also mastering the art of planned obsolescence.

It also helps people learn who they want to be, despite others telling you who you should be, often based on a narrow scope of life.

My appearance has been rooted in questions or statements about sports, or being someone’s bodyguard when they’re famous. To the first point, when asked what team did I play for, I’ve answered “the Frequently Stereotyped.”

So far it hasn’t caused problems.

But even when I wrote this, there were triggering ideas of what could happen in that case, often blended with times and locations where people needed to be talked to more bluntly.

I also think of others that may face similar eye-rolling moments about their appearance alone. I know of one woman who was like me, who got a nickname that was offensive in it defining them by their anatomy.

Why people grow up acting like that’s universally “cool” should be beyond me, but I have a guess. It’s because of someone being raised where they’re not told that not everyone acts like that, or worse. Otherwise I wouldn’t be speaking on it negatively like I have since I started the whole blog.

Because of that, the guess is relatable.

There were a lot of behaviors I had to unlearn on my own, which come from a series of missteps that I didn’t want to repeat on other people. Which sadly includes calling them outside their name, like the last example did to my friend. As well as others that I’ve made light of before.

I get it though. Some people are built to riff or label others as a sign of respect. But respect can come from calling them by the name they were given, or gave themselves. Or not coming up to them saying “wow you’re _____” like the others have in the past and present.

If you tell them to stop that and they continue, move on from them. If you’re one that does it and refuses to stop after telling you to, good luck with that. Or as some would say in another clean sense, “bless your heart.”

Life is full of enough triggering actions, and we could do better not adding ones like that onto each other.