12 Things That Make Even Innocent People Feel Suspicious

You did nothing, but you feel suss

Gif from Parks and Recreation on Giphy

Suspicious, it’s easy to feel but hard to spell. Many of us feel suspishus in our daily lives for no dang good reason. Like when we’re around ‘the fuzz’, or when we’re digging a body-sized hole in the backyard for non-body-sized reasons.

Maybe it’s paranoia leftover from that weedy phase in high school. Maybe it’s just part of human nature to feel splendubious from time to time.

But we feel it.

Hard.

Like we just scarfed down a McSuspicious with cheese for lunch.

There are certain circumstances where we all tend to feel a little ‘sus’ (as the youths say). Particular activities just make us feel circumspicious, especially the following twelve scenarios:

1. Wearing a Hoodie and Sunglasses

Listen, I’m not the Unabomber; I’m just hungover and haven’t washed my hair in three days.

2. Walking Behind Someone

You just happen to be walking the same direction as someone, but now you’re suspiciously close to them. Do you speed up and pass them? Do you slow down and let them escape? No, you just keep the same pace while trying to figure out what an ‘unsuspicious distance’ is.

That or you just lean into the skid and start stalking them.

3. Putting Something in your Purse While at a Store

Maybe it’s your keys, maybe it’s your phone, maybe it’s your kid, and you have a Mary Poppins purse. Whatever you put into a purse or backpack while in a store immediately makes you think you look like you’re shoplifting.

Now you have to make a big huzzah about it, slowly put the phone in your purse, so that other people don’t think you’re stealing it. I recommend incorporating some sort of jazz hands into your performance.

4. Deleting Your Salacious Search History

Listen, sometimes you’re just curious about which poisons don’t leave a trace. Or maybe you just watched a movie where somebody made a homemade bomb, and you’re curious how hard it is. Or you’re a writer and for the plot you need to Google how long bodies take to decompose in different settings.

You feel sketchy as fuck, but it’s just morbid curiosity. Plus, you’re learning science and shit!

Well, that and watching porn and then doing a ‘beat-and-delete’.

But you realize those are weird things to google, so you clear your search history. Problem is, you then wonder if clearing the search history is even more suss than leaving it. An hour later you’re wondering if the FBI agent now watching you has a sense of humor and start googling other weird shit. Like ‘Who would win a fight between a taco and grilled cheese?’ or ‘Can I use my Himalayan salt lamp like a salt lick?’

5. Digging a Large Hole in the Yard

If you dig a big ole hole, you’ll feel like you’re burying a body. Maybe it’s your spouse because they left the dishes next to the sink again, maybe it’s your mother-in-law because she’s…well, mother-in-law-y. Or, most likely, it’s Reba, head of the HOA; your dog bit her and rather than put the dog down like she was threatening, you’re turning her into hosta fertilizer.

You feel so suss about your human-sized hole that you yell out to your neighbor that ‘I’m planting a birch!’ But your voice cracks as you do it and you’re pretty sure that just made things worse.

Then you accidentally leave a little bit of the burlap hanging out after your planting, and you realize that it looks like you indeed just buried a body. Also, your neighbor was 100 feet away when you yelled and may have thought you said that you’re ‘planting a bitch’.

6. Unlocking Your Bike Lock

Your bike lock is an OG and has been with you a while. It has served you like a Centurion soldier, but due to exposure to the elements, it’s a little rusty. So now you’re slightly jiggling the lock to get the key into it. Naturally, you assume strangers must think you’re stealing it.

Or you take a minute to remember the combination to the lock, and now it looks like you’re an expert locksmith thief who is mentally preparing themself to jimmy open the bike’s jaws of life.

Yup, that’s you, the SchwinnStealer3000.

Again, lean into the skid and just resign to your newfound life of low-value crime.

7. Leaving a Store Empty-Handed

If you walk out of a retail store without buying anything, you’re not a customer —but you may have just accidentally cased the joint. Either you cased the joint, or you just unknowingly, accidentally robbed the place.

Although we’re shitty criminal masterminds since thieves get a high and loot after. The rest of us just get a free dose of paranoia.

It’s a weird type of capitalist anxiety that I know I’m not the only one who experiences. I feel it even though I know that the 19-year-old store clerk named Brayla, who didn’t even look up from her phone since I entered, couldn’t care less. Although I like the Braylas, I enjoy being left alone in stores. And for minimum wage, she doesn’t give a rat’s patootie if you’re planning a heist.

8. Going Into a Store Wearing Clothes From It

If accidentally casing the joint wasn’t bad enough, it’s double-suss if you’re wearing clothes that you bought in that store. You own them, you’re already wearing them, they smell like the pickles you had for lunch, but you still feel like you’re somehow stealing them.

9. Passing ‘The Fuzz’

When you drive around a cop, you feel like you’re committing a crime even if you’re driving the speed limit.

If you dare pass them (because sometimes cops drive awkwardly slow, I’m assuming to make us all feel extra suss), we put our hands at 10 and 2, and avoid eye contact like we’re Extra-Strength-Tylenol-level on the autism scale. All the while muttering ‘Don’t be suspicious, don’t be suspicious’.

10. Returning Items

This one might not be all of us, but I know many people feel weird returning things. I imagine the customer service rep thinking something like, ‘Eerhm…did you do something weird to it?’

No. Well, probably not. But now we feel like we did. Meanwhile, the clerk is eyeing you like we’re returning that shirt after we rubbed our balls on it.

11. Throwing Out a Large Area Rug

The classic movie trope of disposing of a body in a large, rolled-up area rug makes throwing out a big rug an extremely dubious-feeling experience.

What happened to activate the rug death roll? Perhaps it was a one-night stand gone wrong, and now you’ve got your former date rolled up like a human burrito after their shag to die for.

12. Calling in Sick on a Holiday

Fridays account for 20% of the standard Monday-Friday workweek. People do indeed get sick on Fridays, because your kid went to kindergarten all week and licked the jungle gym, which is basically a human petri dish. Ditto for holidays.

But it feels suspicious claiming that you’re sick on those prestigious days off. It’s so suss that you might be better off calling in dead and then have your friends film themselves Weekend-at-Bernie-ing your lifeless body around town all weekend.

I feel like I’ve committed a mental felony doing all of the above, and that’s with pretty decent mental health. I can only imagine how people with social anxiety deal with the suspicialiciousnuss.

But if you feel more suss than a choco-smeared-face toddler proclaiming they didn’t eat the cookies, you’re not alone.

We all feel a little susspishy sometimes.

Come to the Dark Side…

Join my merry band of Wilding Out Weirdos. Don’t be scared, we only bite on Tuesdays.

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