Sunday, January 23, 2005

mind your manners

- being a high school student is difficult. there are so many tests of character, life-altering decisions, betrayals, and loves that it's hard to know what to do with yourself. the hardest thing, though, is knowing your hallway manners.

- you'd think it would be easy: you see people you know, you wave. you see your friends, you say hi.

- but it's not. what if the people you know are with a group of friends? what if your friends are with people you don't like? what if someone you might normally wave to is with a group of people ranked cooler thank you? what if someone you normally wouldn't do anything to is the only other person going down the hall so you can't pretend to not see them?

- generally, the rules go (as far i can understand) that if someone's alone, and you know so much as their name, you at least nod. in a big group situation, you pretend you don't' know them, unless you're also friends with the majority of the people in the group. if there's someone you wouldn't normally talk to, and there's lots of people around, it's a-okay to pretend you don't see them. if someone is with a significant other, you pretend you don't see them - not because they won't wave back, but because you don't want to be associated with love. love is not good for the persona.

- as you can see, the whole situation is rather difficult and they begin to cause emotional overload. so to all those people out there who think teenagers whine for nothing, i hope you've learned better today. hallway manners are a hard thing to understand.

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