When I was very young, just old enough to start hating vegetables, my parents started teaching me manners. As far as I can tell, this was a defensive play, an attempt to cover over my general awkwardness in a fine patina of etiquette. Some kids are naturally talented, athletically, mentally, or socially; I ate a lot of lego pieces and loved Aqua. So, like any responsible parents looking out for the success of their offspring, they came to the conclusion that I needed some kind of advantage over other children. If I wasn’t going to be successful in sports or academics, I could at least suck up to those that were. Then, like that little animal that hides in Jabba the Hutt’s tail fat, I would burrow myself into their success for as long as I could.
It wasn’t a terrible strategy, and in my parent’s shoes, watching me polish off another two or three pirate ships worth of lego pieces, it was probably all they could do. The problem is, etiquette is a double-edged sword. In most cases, it allows you to more or less glide through any social engagements you have on auto-pilot. A polite person can go to a party, talk to 30 or so people over the night, and leave without anyone having had a real conversation with them. This is great if you really just want to be at home in your underwear playing Wii Sports, or if you’re a sociopath. You don’t have to think at all: just let your ass-kissing instincts kick in and you’re golden. The downside of all this, though, is that when a genuinely novel situation arises, where there isn’t a clear “polite” thing to do, you’re basically fucked. This happens to me probably three of four times a year, and it is absolutely excruciating.
Here’s an example: this summer, I was walking home from a bar with a friend of mine when she was all “Yo, gimme a fucking piggy-back”. This happens with relative frequency, both because I’m tall and short people love to demean me and because I wear a saddle when I go out. So she hopped on my back, and we made it about half a block before I tripped, collapsed, and threw her at a parked car. Fortunately, she was unhurt, but at some point during the fall one of her breasts had wriggled its way loose from her bra and was resting contentedly outside of her shirt. Now, one part of being polite means that you really only expect to see very specific breasts at very specific times, rather than the occasional breast out in the street every now and again for no real reason. As a result, when you do see a breast, hanging out there without its partner, and you really weren’t planning on seeing that breast, you really don’t know what to do. I completely froze up, like I was camping and a grizzly bear just wandered into my site. My friend, who hadn’t yet noticed, said something to the effect of “You dumb asshole, help me up already”, but I had no idea what to do. If I helped her up, I had to look at her, and if I had to look at her, I would see her breast. And then she would see that I had seen her breast and mace me. I was stuck.
Another thing about relying on manners too much is that in these kinds of frightening new situations, your priorities are completely messed up. I, like a giant lanky catapult, had just launched my friend at a parked Toyota Tercel, and yet all I could think about was not seeing her breast, because that would be rude. So I stood motionless, looking straight up into the sky and not helping her, while she rolled around and swore. Eventually, when I had collected myself, I formed a plan. First, close one of my eyes and block my line of sight to her breast with my hand. Second, reach out with my other hand and help her up. Three, tell her that she was going half and half, but do it in a way that won’t embarrass either of us too much. Four, never speak to her again. What I hadn’t factored into all of this planning was that without my other eye, I had no depth perception. And so, in a desperate effort to avoid an awkward situation, I closed one eye, reached out with my right hand, and open palmed her right in the tit. Not a grab, not a poke or a clutch, but an open palm. It wasn’t forceful, but it got the message across just fine: I think that I have just ended our friendship.
~ David Groves
