Am I a creep? I don’t feel creepy. But I’ve always subscribed to the belief of self-probing – really looking deep inside your soul to find faults you’re normally blind to and changing them. Lately, it seems as if more and more women cross the street when I’m walking toward them. Even if it’s the middle of the afternoon and there are other people walking around, they cross. There’s more: Last week I was leaving the Student Recreation Center and I noticed a woman walking a few feet behind me, so I held the door open for her. She looked at me, stopped and started fiddling with her cell phone. I let the door close and walked into the bitter cold. Friendly smiles aren’t returned. Purses are clutched tighter. I’m beginning to feel like John Hinckley, the man who shot Reagan.
Is it just me unwittingly being creepy, or have things gotten so bad that women need to be hyper-vigilant at all times? To find out, I probed myself and came up with the following list to help determine a person’s creepiness. Feel free to take the test along with me. If six or more of these creepy things apply to you, please stay away from my sister.
1. You have a penis or are often equipped with a penis-shaped apparatus.
2. You have facial hair, or you have the capability of growing facial hair, or you have hair growing anywhere a member of the Vienna Boys’ Choir doesn’t, or you’re a member of the Vienna Boys’ Choir.
3. The 25-most-recently-played list on your MP3 player is infested with American Idol runners-up, or you’re in love with Randy Jackson, or you can remember when Paula Abdul had talent, or you’re Simon Cowell.
4. You own night-vision goggles, and you’re not in the military.
5. You work out on any of the machines at the gym that have these words in them: Elliptical, rower, stepper or stationary, or you have fallen off the treadmill because someone picked a wedgie, or you have ever uttered the words: “I’m going to go wail on my (insert body part name here).”
6. Your ancestors didn’t come from Antarctica.
7. You’re a sexual predator.
8. Your idea of good hygiene includes Axe body spray in doses high enough to kill a woman weighing less than 105 lbs., or you offer to bench press women who weigh less than 105 lbs., or you don’t bathe, even when the flies that land on your stinking necrotic skin fall over dead from your putrescence.
9. You laughed when I said I probed myself.
10. You think “bang” is a suitable synonym for doing something creepy to someone while she is under the influence of the Rohypnol you just gave her.
Phew! Five out of 10 is getting pretty close to creepy, but I still have time to alter my ways and brandish my chivalry for all to witness. And in my defense, I only use the Elliptical machines at the gym because I hurt my knees when I was on my high school swim team. That breast stroke kick is killer.
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