Is that your breath, or did I just step in pooh?

You know, it’s a funny kind of world we live in. People you don’t even know won’t hesitate to judge you. They will pass comment on your appearance, your social skills, your apparent level of education and even your accumulated wealth. And what’s more, they selflessly don’t expect anyone to return the favour.

For example, people will quite happily and even perhaps instinctively rate your driving skills from within their own steel chariots. I am led to believe that there is a status quo when it comes to driving. It has become our social duty to openly rate a persons motoring skills. I guess we should take this as a form of constructive criticism to enable us to better ourselves.

I have come to the conclusion that there is a rating technique whereby other drivers will score you from 1 to 5. This is indicated by a show of fingers. Well it seems that my driving skills could use some fine tuning as I often score only a ‘1’ rating. What I don’t understand is the fact that I score most of my ‘1’s when I am driving along quite comfortably at, or just below, the legal speed limit. That’s when someone, usually in a beat up Holden Commodore, will risk their own life and that of their passengers by exceeding the speed limit so that they can move up along side of me and proceed to award me my score of ‘1’ by raising the relevant quantity of fingers.

What is so confusing is that it is times like this when I think I am driving well. I admit, I am by no means a fantastic driver. I have found myself cutting peoples nose off as I change lanes without properly checking behind me. And at these times, I appreciate that I deserve only a ‘1’ rating, but how can this possibly compare equally to staying wholely within the one traffic lane and maintaining the legal speed limit?

This is just one of the many pro-active methods by which humans will, without prior request, offer each other feedback to help us to become better people. So of all the many reasons we humans feel the need to judge our peers, why is it then, that under no circumstances will anyone ever inform another person that their breath stinks?

Take my brother. I don’t have anything to do with him since I moved from New South Wales to Queensland. It seems he cannot bring himself to forgive us for taking his nephew away from him. But prior to me moving away, we were as good as best mates. We played sports together. We went out drinking together. We both smoked cigarettes and pretty much on a daily basis we smoked marijuana through a hash pipe together. Why am I telling you this? Because with both of us having exactly the same habits, we both must therefore have the same dental hygiene problems. And let me tell you, his breath stunk to high heavens. But naturally I never told him. It literally smelt like pooh and you would think that I could only be doing him a favour by warning him about it before he attempts to flirt with some chick in a night club.

To make things worse, when he had a few drinks under his belt he became one of those touchy-feely people who needed to come right up close to you to tell you how much he loved you. It was like…”Yeah I love you too but get the fuck away from me you’re making me sick”. To this day, it has made me paranoid that my breath stinks too. Although I have completely given up smoking of all substances, how can I be sure that my breath has ceased to stink? My wife assures me that I don’t have smelly breath, but just like everyone else, she could be abiding by the unwritten law that you do not inform another living sole of the odours that waft from within their mouth. My paranoia has also led to other problems. Because I am worried about offending people, I cannot look directly at them when I speak to them. Therefore, as any body language expert will tell you, I must be lying when in actual fact I am telling you the truth. I just don’t want you to think that I eat faesces for breakfast.

So is that where the word ‘faesecious’ comes from? The shit that dribbles out of ones mouth? Feel free to correct me on my spelling of the word but before you do, make sure you are right. And remember that I am in Australia and we spell things differently to you yanks. That’s a big problem I have these days. I used to rely on Microsoft Word to tell me if I was spelling incorrectly until I realised I had it on the US dictionary and I was spelling HEAPS of words wrong.

Anyways, for any of you who know me or get the chance to meet me, if you could all just do me one favour and tell me honestly…does my breath stink? However, before you do tell me you should first ask me if I just farted, cos you might be getting the two smells mixed up.