Socks.

He wore a black toque, a black denim jacket, and light brown pants, with black shoes. On this particular day, he was wearing white socks, which became very obvious when he sat down. So he tried to go through his day, sitting down as little as possible, or if he had to sit down, try to sit down behind something, so that no one would see his socks.

It didn't occur to him that maybe it was a stupid, stupid to hide your socks from the world. As if the world would care about his socks? And if they did, would that give him cause to care about what the world thought? Why did the world have more power than him?

The world had more power than he did.

He ended up being very tired on his way home from work, so he sat down on the bus, forgetting about his socks. A beautiful woman was sitting across from him, giggling. He thought that she was flirting with him in some way. But when he tried talking to her, she immediately grew stiff and looked freaked out. That's when he figured it out.

"You were laughing at my socks weren't you!"

"What? No..."

"Why would you laugh at my socks? I know they don't match, you think I don't know that they don't match my outfit!"

"It's nothing, I didn't even notice your socks. What about your socks? Oh I see, they're white."

Naturally somebody else on the bus noticed them, and young man, clean shaven, sharp outfit.

"I think you need to calm down, man."

"I need to calm down? She was laughing at me! Laughing at my socks!"

"I wasn't!"

"She says she wasn't."

"Oh fuck this, I'm getting off, I'll walk home." As he was walking to the door of the bus he turned back to the woman "That was just plain mean and hurtful, and just because you're attractive doesn't mean it's okay to be hurtful to people"

And as he was stepping off he could have sworn he heard her say:

"Actually, I think it is."