Dear Creepy Old White Men, Please Stop Talking To Me

4 min readMay 14, 2021

Thank you in advance

Photo by Joshua Rawson-Harris on Unsplash

While I realize that my experiences aren’t anything unique or uncommon, I’d like to share a few encounters with creepy old white guys that I’ve had recently as well as my thoughts on the unwelcome comments women so frequently receive from men.

1.) Monkey Business

I was in Costco minding my own business and loading up my cart with bananas when a man comes up to me. Mind you it’s the middle of a pandemic when we’re supposed to be social distancing. He says “that’s a lot of monkey business!” in reference to my cartload of bananas and then laughs at his hilarious observation.

For reference, I do buy a lot of bananas, like maybe 8 bunches, but I freeze a lot of them for smoothies and I make 2 or 3 smoothies a day. I also live with 2 other people. My whole goal for shopping at Costco is to stock up on as much shit as possible so I can avoid leaving home for as long as possible. No, this is not related to the pandemic as I did this before it even started. I just hate people and leaving my house.

My response to this man’s comment was to smile and sort of laugh along. Then I realized that I was wearing a mask so I didn’t actually have to. I’m sick and tired of having to humor men and laugh at their stupid “jokes” and quips.

2.) The Photo-Worthy Potato

Oh, look, another produce related weirdo encounter. I was at the farmer’s market last summer, once again minding my own business. I was buying, among other things, a very large sweet potato. This creepy old white guy — who happened to be a leader of the cult, I mean church, I used to attend— comes over and says “that’s photo worthy!” and then everyone feels free to start making comments about my damn potato. Did I ask them what they thought about my potato? No, I fucking didn’t. Is it too much to ask to not have the amount or size of the fruits and vegetables I’m buying scrutinized?