Social Awkwardness, Social Rudeness

It's very easy to get embarrassed during one's day-to-day life. For example, I was walking through campus a few weeks ago, and I saw one of my students. The student looked right at me. I raised my hand to wave, but it soon became clear that he was not going to wave back. I guess I worried about looking like a fool--it's silly to wave to someone who doesn't wave back--because without thinking about it, I moved my hand up to my head to make it look like I wasn't waving but actually just scratching my head. Why was I so worried that someone would see that I waved to someone who didn't want to wave back? (By the way, I'm going to find a way to get revenge on the student who didn't wave back.)

Think about a time when you were embarrassed in public. Why happened? Why were you embarrassed? How did you respond?

Think about some embarrassing situations. I shared one good example with my Friday class: a very embarrassing situation is when a person goes up to a woman and asks her, "When are you going to have your baby?" only to have the woman reply, "I'm not pregnant."


Social rudeness: We have certain expectations of social interaction, and we don't even care about the sincerity of those actions. For example, if we pick up a book that someone dropped, we expect that person to say, "Thank you." If the person says, "thank you" in a way that says, "I'm only saying 'thank you' because I have to," it doesn't bother us too much; however, if the person says nothing, we might get very upset. The other day on campus, I picked up a basketball that had rolled into the street. The person didn't thank me when I threw it back to him. I wanted to go get the ball back and throw it into the field.

Think of a time when someone was rude to you in public: perhaps they took your seat or bumped into you hard without saying, "Excuse me." How did you respond? Why did you feel the way you feel?

Think of something about public interaction that upsets you. Why does it upset you? For example, I always get upset when I hold the door open for the person behind me but the person doesn't thank me. Some women feel it is chauvinistic for a man to hold a door open for a woman: it is kind of saying, "Women are too delicate to open a door, so a man should do it for her." So I understand why a woman might not want to thank me. But I want to yell to her, "I hold the door open for men, too!"