There is a character in the Charles Portis novel The Dog of the South who follows a meticulous method anytime he orders a beer. He moistens each corner of the cocktail napkin it’s served with to anchor it to the bar. That way, the napkin doesn’t come up with the mug when he takes a sip and make him, in his mind, appear ridiculous.

The character in the novel is supposed to be a figure of fun, obsessing over trivial things and always worried about appearing smart and in control. So the idea of gluing down a cocktail napkin is supposed to be a funny way of showing how nuts he is. But since I read that passage decades ago, I have caught myself doing the same thing. And I have to say that every now and then, when I see it happen to someone else, I occasionally think, Boy, look at that guy! What a doofus!

We all, I suppose, have things we worry about when out in public. I have a friend who became obsessed with the two red marks that would appear on either side of his nose after he removed his sunglasses. He hated those little red dots and felt that made him look clownish and silly. So one day, he stood in front of a mirror, removed his sunglasses, and timed the disappearance of the offensive indentations. It took them, he told me later, about seven minutes to vanish. So now he removes them seven minutes before heading indoors.

I don’t really care, to be honest, if the napkin sticks or doesn’t or about red marks on my nose. Which isn’t to say I’m immune to these sorts of things. I’m more concerned, for instance, with making sure that the button placket on my shirts — you know, the strip of fabric that runs down a shirt where the buttons and buttonholes go? — doesn’t spread out when I sit down and reveal a part of my stomach. 

“Just get shirts that fit better,” I can hear you saying. So for the record: I have many shirts that were made just for me by a fancy London shirtmaker. And in the years between getting the shirts made and today, I have actually lost weight, so it’s not really a question of my girth making the shirt placket pooch out. It’s just something that happens — or, more accurately, something I’m worried will happen and may make me look stupid.

Also: I don’t like it when the outline of my mobile phone can be seen through the front pocket of my pants. For some reason, I associate that look with one of those awful “men’s movement” guys you see every now and then in skinny suits and idiotic shoes. So I keep my phone in my back pocket and often forget it’s there, sit on it, and crack the screen.

Part of being a well-adjusted, neurosis-free adult, we are told, is realizing that no one is paying you that much attention. No one is noticing the cocktail napkin or the fraction of exposed belly or the red dots along the side of your nose. There is no audience, in other words, keeping track of your social wins and losses. But for some reason, many of us prefer to monitor our public appearance compulsively as if we’re the object of great scrutiny. Everyone is watching me, we sometimes think, which is nearly always untrue. Until, that is, we plop down on a subway bench and feel something sharp underneath us and pull out our phones, now bent and cracked, and we just know everyone in the subway car is thinking, Boy, look at that guy! What a doofus!

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Rob Long is a television writer and producer, including as a screenwriter and executive producer on Cheers, and he is the co-founder of Ricochet.com.