September 12, 2004

If nebulous social situations have gotten any easier since my freshman year, it's only because I've stopped caring. But, occasionally, a nebulous social situation will persist in such a way as to demand the only solution a computer science major can give - a vastly unrealistic quantitative analysis! So here goes:

You are walking alone back from class through some generally dreary, unpopulated area of campus, like around the Lee Building ("Come be tutored here! We're so old we have ghosts! We actually think that's a selling point!"). Then, in the distance, coming towards you from perhaps sixty yards away or more, you notice a person. After a moment, you realize that you know this person, in the sense of, "I met this person my first week of freshman year when he exchanged scintillating words about our majors ('Undecided? Great!') and now we've said 'hello' to each other every time we've chanced to meet as if we are the godparents of each other's children, when, in fact, I'm not entirely sure what the person's name is, or whether they have one at all, like Prince." And this is where the dilemma sets in.

In the old caveman days, you would simply beat him over the head with any number of blunt objects and that would have been that. Unfortunately, because that made too much sense, humanity moved against such finessing of the situation and instituted "etiquette," which is a French word meaning "debilitating self-consciousness" or possibly a member of some unspeakable phylum that you eat. Either way, thanks to the French, social situations often suck, and in the absence of blunt objects, what's a guy to do?

You only have so many options, and every last one of them may result in the perception of irredeemable dorkiness. You could do the completely honest thing and yell 'hey' at him from sixty yards away, as if you are just really excited to see this guy, but then. what next? Carry on a conversation at sixty yards? Run up to him excitedly so you can. continue on by? Exchange words about your majors? This is the social equivalent of moving your king into the middle of the chessboard as quickly as possible. It may look valiant to the eye of a retard, but ultimately, there are better moves to make.

Because if you jump too soon, when you actually get within the recognized conversational distance of the person, you can not just pretend that you have done your duty and walk on like he's no longer there, but you have to acknowledge his existence again as if you are seeing him for the first time (or else, they wonder why you're only friendly at long distances), so you might smile or arch your eyebrows or something as you pass, as if to communicate, "Ha ha! Here you are, passing me now! Who would have predicted something like that?" You could try and say something, like, "Have a good one, man," but that kind of sounds like you are terminating a conversation, as opposed to a thirty-yard silent walk in opposite directions. Everything you do makes you look like a dork. (Unless you employ sarcasm, as in, "Let's do this again sometime!" This will make you look like a rude dork.)

Can one simply ignore the other person? Well, I guess one can if one happens to be that one guy from across the hall. This is a guy for whom even a grunt of acknowledgement is evidently way too much trouble to give for anyone, including members of his immediate family or even members of his Natural Selection team. Now, I've had fun conversations with him on many scintillating topics ("What if life were like Natural Selection?" and "I had a dream about Natural Selection" being preferred subjects of discourse), only to find that, when I chance upon him in the student center, I might as well be a large shrub with a backpack on for all the attention he pays me. Now, I'm not complaining really. some people just do that. But I don't imagine everyone is as wonderfully magnanimous and understanding as I am.

I don't know why I can't bring myself to ignore everybody when I'm traversing the campus. I ignore my closest friends just fine when they're trying to share their life traumas ("And, so, I guess that's how we broke up. I think I'll never love God again." "That's nice."). But I can't ignore people that I only halfway know in a university hallway. Clearly there is some deficiency here. But let's not dwell.

So those two options are generally unacceptable. That leaves me with the method I like to call delayed eye contact. Delayed eye contact is a social precaution whereby, upon noticing an acquaintance at a distance, one immediately lowers one's head to stare at one's feet for at least 75% of the distance between them, and then suddenly raises one's head at the appropriate time, smiling, and issuing a greeting as if to suggest, "Wow, there you are! I hadn't noticed you seeing as how I was staring directly at my feet all this time!" Thanks to delayed eye contact, you will then get out the greeting necessary to keep the other person from being offended without enough time to suffer any awkward pauses or attempts at conversation. You give yourself enough time to say "'Sup?" and then breeze past.

However, this method takes a great deal of practice to perfect. You have to leave enough time between the popping up of the head and the initial greeting to make it clear that you are recognizing the person for the first time, or else, it looks very strange, as if you had sensed them via ESP, or are stalking them a la every late night USA movie ever made. You also can't be too conspicuous with the looking down at your feet, as if you suddenly find the tops of your sneakers tremendously fascinating or, if you are the side-looking type, the wall of the Lee Building . I recommend tilting the head at a -30 degree angle from the horizon and keeping your eyes glazed over in the manner of a student in Church History class. In fact, if you are convincing enough, the other guy may start to apply cardiopulmonary resuscitation, and then you'll have something to talk about next time. So this is perhaps the preferred strategy.

But really, I am just kidding. There is no preferred strategy. No matter what you do, everyone will think you are a dork. They will go home and add your name to their list of "terminal dorks" that they keep appended to the wall for the amusement of their pals, and that will be that. So why get your panties in a ruffle over something you can't help?

Have a good one, man.