Face Paint

So, at some point in your life you learn that everyone else in the world is obsessed with painting their faces.

But it's more complicated than that; you see, tall people can only paint their face blue, and short people can only paint their face red. but they can't do it to themselves! there's some weird story about it making hair grow in their hands? Instead they need to get painted by a person of the opposite color.

But what about green, you ask? Well, clearly green does not exist, that's the color of trees. What are you, a tree?

At the beginning you think that it fits kinda neatly, but after a bit of reflection you start noticing that it doesn't, and then you discover that people of average height, whose color would be dubious, are being forced to live their entire lives hunched, or wear tall shoes to actually fit the color they do. In the best case. Because some of them got mutilated at birth to make them have the right height. Because otherwise, how would they know the color they should have their face painted?

And in the middle of all this you are "But… it's just paint. in your face"

And they turn this on you. Because clearly painting your face is a core characteristic of being human, and you clearly must want it . What are you, a rock? And at this point you are so painting confused you start internalizing the idea that something is very wrong with you.

So you try to do the right paint, with the right people, and you can fake it sometimes but other times you know you are totally messing it up because whatever it is these people are feeling you are not feeling. You are not human. Because you don't want to paint your face.