I have no political beliefs regarding circumcision. Until last week, I’d assumed this was natural—that there are people who are passionately either for or against foreskin removal came as a complete shock to me.
But, there I was, parking my car in Binkley Garage, and on a bumper sticker on the car next to mine were the words: “Uncircumcised? Lucky Stiff.”
What led the owner of this car to so forceful an opinion on circumcision I’ll never know (if that was your car, please feel free to e-mail me at [email protected] to enlighten me).
I hope for his sake—I’m just assuming it was a male driver—he hadn’t come to this position as a result of a personal experience with botched circumcision. But he had another bumper sticker critical of puppy mills, so he seems like a nice enough guy.
That wasn’t the only case of “TMI” forced upon me last week.
It’s a tradition that every year in the theater department, the seniors get up on stage and give advice to the new freshmen. Sometimes it’s good advice, sometimes it’s bad, and sometimes it’s just downright disturbing.
But nothing was quite so shocking as my friend Micah’s advice, which was where one should go when one has to make a particularly heavy bowel movement (the bathrooms in the second floor lobby of the Greer Garson theater, if you were wondering).
Now, I love Micah, and I have a healthy respect for the proper functioning of one’s digestive system, but that seems like the kind of thing a freshman should discover for himself.
Then there’s my friend “Amy,” whose Facebook statuses frequently announce who has made her angry and how they did it.
Amy isn’t her real name, but I’ve chosen to use a pseudonym to protect her real identity. And to make sure that her next status isn’t, “I HATE NAT. HOW COULD HE WRITE THAT IN THE DAILY CAMPUS? HE’S SUCH A JERK.”
Facebook has always been a good way of making public information that should really be kept private.
There was that time earlier this year when all my female friends were posting colors as their statuses. I found out afterwards that they were telling me what color bra they were wearing, and that this was supposed to help raise awareness of breast cancer.
Now, I am emphatically anti-cancer of any kind, but I’m not sure how knowing that the girl who sits next to me in English is wearing leopard-skin undergarments will help anything.
When it comes to fighting cancer, I much prefer things like pink ribbons, LIVESTRONG bracelets and Relay For Life. But that’s just me.
I leave it to someone smarter than me to theorize why our generation feels so neurotically compelled to share intimate details and opinions with complete strangers. I’m sure it has something to do with the alienating effect of technology or the high divorce rate or the radiation coming from our microwaves.
But until someone proves that we’re psychologically incapable of keeping things to ourselves, I ask my fellow college students to please, please show a little restraint. Where you choose to move your bowels should really be between you and your God.
Nathaniel French is a senior theater major. He can be reached for comment at [email protected].