I can take a joke as well as the next guy. I’ve got a sense a humour, and I’m fine with the occasional ribbing. If you want to make fun of the goofy way I dress or tease me about how much I love the Oak Ridge Boys, I’m totally cool with it.

But there’s one thing that I’m honestly really sensitive about and that’s my thick skin. It’s just not something I can control so it burns me up when people feel the need to make comments about it.

Having a thick skin makes things hard enough, let alone having to deal with all the “jokes” about it. It already makes it hard for me to experience life the way most people do. I feel temperatures more extremely, I sweat more than most people and I’ve never experienced the joy of bleeding.

So, I’m sorry, I just don’t like to get any shit about it from a bunch of thin-skinned wiseacres who don’t have a clue what it’s like to have a little extra meat around the hypodermis.  

Having a thick skin makes things hard enough, let alone having to deal with all the ribbing about it.

I’m so sick of people pointing at me, asking if they can touch my arm or punching me and then asking whether I can feel it behind my thick skin. Yes, I feel it, in fact I feel it more than most people. 

You know where else I feel? In my heart, just like the rest of you. Even with my thick skin, I still have feelings.

Again, I don’t mind if you give me a hard time sometimes about things that I choose to do but I can’t control how my skin is. This is just the way I was born.

I guess you could say that making fun of my abnormally thick skin is kind of like my achilles heel. Unfortunately unlike the story of Achilles and the heel that led him to great fame and fortune, this is holding me back.

Every time somebody yells out “hey, thick skin” or does an impression of me by bundling up the skin on their arm, it really cuts me deep, so deep that even someone like me might lose a little blood. 

I’m not asking people to always be pleasant about everything. You should definitely make fun of people if they’re acting abnormal or are different in any way in comparison to mainstream society but this issue is out of my hands. 

I know I’ve got thick skin. I always have and I always will, but it’d be nice if people could just lay off a little because I’m really, really sensitive about it.