AwkwardRules

The situation - You’re visiting your hometown, perhaps for Thanksgiving. You go to the supermarket to get something your mom needs to make dinner and you hear someone call your name. You turn around to see someone that looks familiar - it’s that person you kind of knew in high school. You get into a conversation, and then realize that it’s lasted longer than the sum of all of your previous conversations with this person in high school.

Figure 1. Comparing conversations in high school to present day conversation. Note that sophomore year is not shown because there was no conversation.

Soon the question “So what are you doing now?” inevitably comes up.  You answer, “Oh I’m <current thing you’re doing> in <current city you live in>, how about you?”  Now it’s a crapshoot. The worst case scenario is if they answer, “I’m just working here at the supermarket”, you feel like a douchebag for talking about your job in <current city you live in>. Or they say something that sounds pretty awesome, and you wish you would have made what you’re doing sound cooler.

Then there’s the case where you see the person you kind of knew in high school at some place that’s really far from your hometown, in which case the conversation is usually interesting*. But what if it’s only the next town over from where you live? Is it still noteworthy?

The following rule will help you in this situation:

AwkwardRule #10: Running into people you kind of knew in High School

For the purposes of this rule, the person you kind of knew in high school (PYKOKIHS) shall be defined as:

1. A person that you bear no ill will toward, and may even like, but for whatever reason you just never really spent any time with them in high school.
2. Someone you don’t know at all outside of high school. So for example if you knew them well in middle school, or they were on your sports team they don’t qualify as a PYKOKIHS.

Adhere to the following guidelines:

1. Have them say what they do first - Just like in negotiation, you gain the biggest advantage by having them talk first. This way, once they tell you what they do, you can adjust what you say. So for example, if they were to say, “Oh, I’m just working here at Chipotle” and you’re a U.S. Senator, you could say that you’re “just doing some government job.” Or if you’re a crack dealer and the other person is an executive at a fortune 500 company, you could say that you’re an entrepreneur and you run your own business with a product your customers can’t seem to get enough of.

2. Conversational time limit - If you’re in your hometown and there’s nothing really remarkable about the person being there as well, try to limit your conversation to the sum of all your previous conversations with the person. However, if you see the person outside your hometown, multiply the time limit by D, where D is the distance from your hometown to where you are now. For example, if you went to high school in Rochester Hills, MI and you see someone in Boulder, CO, you multiply your time limit by 1,302 because it’s pretty interesting that you ran into them so far away from home. Here is the exact formula:

Time Limit = (Sum of Previous Conversations) * (Distance from hometown to current location + 1)

Amendment from Kevin Owocki and MWay - Holiday Time Multiplier Factor

A Holiday Time Multiplier Factor shall be applied to the time limit above. The HTMF shall be defined as:

HTMF = 1 / ((duration of holiday in days (1 to 30)) * (total holidays) * (%people who observe holiday and go home (1 to 100)))

Any other suggestions for amendments to the rule?  What do you do when this happens to you?

Credits: Michael Dagitses came up with the idea of a distance-based multiplier on conversation time limit. I would like to note for the record that he has a very sad site, and his neglect is a form of abuse affecting the entire internets.

* This actually happened to me right before I was going to post this rule! I ran into a person I knew pretty well in middle school, but not that well in high school, and her friend who I only kind of knew in high school (we had a big high school, almost 2,000 students). Unfortunately I had only written the situation part, and not the rule part. Luckily they are both doing cool things here in Colorado, and it was fun/interesting running into them!

The situation - You’re boarding your flight and as you walk down the aisle and find your seat, you see that you’re next to a kindly old lady who smiles at you warmly. This warm smile is the death of your hopes of reading your novel.

Inevitably, at some point, she’ll lean over and say, “my (son or daughter) is about your age” and you’ll be pulled into a conversation. Nobody has been able to demonstrate a way to politely/nicely respond to that statement without engaging in at least a little conversation - many great minds throughout history have tried*.

Sometimes you might actually want to talk to the person next to you. Airplane conversations might actually be interesting. The real problem though, however, is once you’re in an airplane conversation, how do you end it?

You can’t fake a phone call, you don’t have anywhere to be except your seat, and you’re not free to just roam around. You can try to avoid talking altogether, but sometimes you can’t avoid it. And what if you want to talk to the other person, but just not for the whole 5 hours? Unfortunately you can’t just say, “well this has been a great conversation, I’m going to read my book now.”

This problem is addressed by ->

Any suggestions for amendments / changes to this rule? Email awkwardrules@gmail.com.

* Little known fact - René Descartes fruitlessly contemplated how to escape this exact situation with the kindly old women that sat next to him on long horse-drawn carraige rides. He went insane and had to start over mentally with a clean slate and “I think therefore I am”.