Is there such a thing as being too sensitive? Sometimes I am so paralysed by the fear of offending people that I am rendered speechless.

I wish I could be brash and abrasive. Bandying about phrases without fear of recrimination. Stomping bullishly through the china shop of social intercourse. I have met people that can do things with their eyebrows that intimidate and express. I could leap up and down on the spot flailing my arms like a windmill in a hurricane, and people would look straight through me.

I will now set out to offend half of you reading this page, deliberately.

I will show you the new edgy me, the me that takes no prisoners. I will make you step back and think… is this the floor-tile we visited yesterday? Is this the man whose anger is as impotent as a genetically modified strawberry?

Hey you! Yeah you! Bet you have trouble putting on your underwear without falling over… Are you one of those ridiculous sock-rollers? Do you in fact take a fresh pair of socks, and with no regard for the sensitivities of others, roll them up with vigorous twisting movements before you put them on? What kind of a hosiery reprobate are you?

I mean they are socks! Ya just pull em on! Are you afraid of pulling a ligament in your misshapen foot-digits? Do you suspect that if you do it a different way you will graze an ankle? Somebody has taken the effort to bundle the things up in pairs, but that’s ‘acceptable’! Oh no! You have to take them and unroll them, and then squidge them up individually before you guide them over your over-protected feet. Live a little!

I bet you even sit on the edge of the bed as you do it! What is your problem! Hopping around the room not good enough for you? I hope your drier causes a major sock-divorce, and that you end up with disorder in your foot-wear shelf. Singles. Holes. Ridicule in the office. May your shoes seem not to fit, as you stagger around in mis-matching cotton and wool non-pairs!

I can’t continue.

I feel so bad. I picture you all weeping and vowing to alter lifetimes of dressing habits. I am just not actively aggressive. I enter a week filled with so much potential for confrontation and negotiation knowing that I am too polite to say what is on my mind. I am the guy who gets to apologise when I am the one being maligned. I am the one whose ‘socks’ are mocked, and who lacks the courage to stand up and say “ Hey, pal, these socks may be different to yours, but that’s the way I like em”.

What are your ‘socks’? Do you also wish you were more vocal in your defence?