Sick and knowing someone

Yer that's me right now. Fighting off a cold. Not the "Ted Bundy" kinda sick but it's stopped me from feeling like doing things like blogging, tidying and well everything outside of just sitting and eating bagfuls of Cadbury Mini-eggs.

Anyway, I thought I'd throw in another blog post about social skills because I'm fascinated by them and I'm one of those guys that won't just do something the same way over and over again just because it's always been done that way and so I like to examine why us humanoids do things the way we do, over and over again.

Today I'm intrigued by the concept of knowing another person. Not in the biblical sense, mind you, before those of you in the back of the room start snickering. I mean how much should you really know someone else? When it comes to partners we are basically expected to know everything. Where they grew up, who there idol is, what is the favourite type of ice-cream etc.. and in this situation knowing these things and remembering them doesn't freak them out. In fact it comforts and sometimes impresses them.

But let's say you meet a new person. They tell you a couple of things about themselves and then 3 months later you meet again. You say something like "Oh, and how is your dog doing now? And have you finished that class you were taking? Did you end up going to see Avatar in the end?" and you have probably weirded them out.

Those "rules" are pretty simple to follow. Where the line blurs is with friends who you are close to. I think this is probably more true for guys..when talking to both guy friends and female friends. If I suddenly told my friend Geoff I remember his shoe size, ice cream flavour and first pet name I'm certainly heading into weirded out territory. Equally I'm probably getting a restraining order against me if I approached a female friend and recalled what dress she wore to the prom and what the colour of her toothbrush is without the topic of conversation being about either of these things.

So, how much should you really know about a friend (and more importantly admit to remembering)? I think I can stick to these guidelines:

1) It depends on the friend
2) It depends what you know
3) If they ain't talking about it, don't bring it up.
4) Don't ask, don't tell.

Society Secrets: Revealed!!

Yes, it's me, the masked magician here to reveal the top Magic secrets!!

Just kidding. Although I love magic, I can't do any and know no secrets, I just liked ripping off the show title for my blog post title today.

I have a question for "y'all" today. Do you like rules?

I do. Rules means there are expectations. There are consistencies. Everyone is treated equally and right and wrong, good and bad are outlined.

When you start a new school/job you are often told the rules. For every job I've worked at I've had a "company handbook" telling me all the no-no's, my school planner had all the regulations for the school. I knew what was considered a "bad thing" to do. But what about in the rest of our lives? We live by certain rules in society that just aren't talked about and for some of us they are harder to either notice or understand why they exist. Without either of these things you tend to make a lot of society mistakes.

I take the approach of erring on the side of caution in most situations where I don't know what to do. Coming to America was really a big learning curve for me as the rules of society are different. It's not just the language and local traditions, it's a whole different way of thinking and acting and expecting. Instead of "Sky Mall" magazine on the flight I would have done better with "America for Dummies".

For instance, over here it seems that a handshake is always expected meeting a male friend or even a stranger for the first time. Something I learned today was I can drop a check off (or cheque off... or Chekov), at the drive-thru bank without a deposit slip and the teller KNOWS that I want cash.

I say it a lot but I'm learning something new almost every week.