DON'T READ THIS!

Did that make you want to read this?

Hypothetical situation:

Let’s say your friend walks up to you with a clan of people following, carrying a foreign object in their hand. They make a twisted, some might say “stanky” face and says, “This smells soooo bad. Smell it!” And thrust the foreign object in your immediate direction. All the while the people who were following your friend and conveniently stopped to watch are all giggling and watching closely for your reaction. Do you smell it?

After putting the clues together, the stanky face, the fact that it’s a foreign object, and the snickering friends all around, common sense would say, “Don’t smell it! Why would you smell something that you can tell smells retched and disgusting without getting anywhere near it! You don’t even know what this thing is!” Even though this “voice” is yelling at you and telling you not to do it, you can’t help it. Some imaginary force starts pushing your face towards the object. You try to tell it no and repel it from forcing you to smell this hideous and disgusting thing, but you can’t stop it. You have to smell this thing.

You smell it

It smells worse than you ever could have imagined

Everyone laughs hysterically. So much so that they keel over in pain.

With the same stanky face as your friend had upon their approach, you turn to your friend and yell, “Why would you make me smell that?! That’s disgusting! What is that!?”

“I didn’t make you smell it. You totally smelled it on your own. I have no idea what this is. I just found it and thought it smelled disgusting so I’m having everyone smell it” Says your friend with the most malicious grin they can muster.

This happens to me all the time. Whenever someone says smell this, it’s gross, I can never resist but to smell it. Kind of like the cliché, curiosity killed the cat. Except it’d be curiosity caused the human to create a funny, stanky face and yell. I think I’m gonna have to start using that. See if it catches on.

This is exactly like when someone’s doing something behind you and they yell, “Don’t look!” I usually immediately look to see what all the fuss is about and then the person gets aggravated and exclaims they told me not to look and that I should have followed those instructions. This situation is a little different because it gets a little awkward if you see something you shouldn’t because you looked but really it’s kind of their fault. They know the rules of saying something like that. Everyone does.