Do you have a psychotherapist to help you with this? You have lots of good insight and a therapist would be helpful in helping you be who you want to be.

Avoidance is a coping mechanism. It works in the short term, but isn't helpful for long range plans. In the short term we avoid the machine in the crowded lot and we feel relief from the risk of looking like an idiot. In the long term, we miss the opportunity to be naturally curious about the machine and the freedom to explore our curiosity and to realize that other people thinking of us as an idiot is about them; it doesn't make us an idiot, because we know we are just naturally curious! (And their thinking of another being an idiot can be about their own desire to explore and their fears about that).

Prozac won't do anything for your thought processes, but psychotherapy will help you explore that with a non-judgmental acceptance and with a shared curiosity.