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 playing a pickup 3 on 3 basketball game with a group of adults when all of a sudden an adorable little eleven year old asks if he can join. Everyone says ok, and he joins the other team, so it’s 4 of them vs 3 of you. After some hard fought minutes, the score is tied at 14 and the next team to score wins.

The kid somehow gets the ball and is driving to the hoop. Of course you’re the only one in position to block him. If you completely reject him like you would an adult, you could be destroying his potentially fragile ego forever. What if he never plays basketball again and ends up as a Golden Gate Park Hippie? Also, all of the other adults might yell at you for swatting away the ball, which they see as a metaphor for the kid’s hopes and dreams.  Figures 1 and 2 demonstrate this visually:

Figure 1. Small child going up for a shot.

Figure 2. The result of playing too competitively and blocking the shot.

However, there’s also a danger in letting him score. If you don’t guard him at all, then he’ll figure out that he’s being patronized and that could also damage his ego. Also, if he scores and the other team ends up winning, then your teammates might be mad at you.

So what do you do? This situation requires a delicate balance of competitiveness that is described in this rule:

Any suggestions for ammendments?