It doesn’t take many visits to pick up on the finer points of etiquette at this little coffee place close to campus.
In Cultural Anthropology 101, we learned to identify rules of behavior as “norms.”
So here’s a norm.
Maybe it’s something they put in the coffee but people here go out of their way to make lifelong introverts feel popular— even if they don’t want to be popular.
Here’s another. Bragging is perfectly acceptable as long as you do it outside at a distance of 25 feet from the door. Second-hand bragging annoys people and stays in their clothes for days.
People who sit in the windows and never say a word are not rude. Their backs are to the room because they want to work. You can mutter a brief hello or God-bless a sneeze but then it’s good form to let them get back to work.
The room has a soft, nougat-filled center reserved for regulars who sit and enjoy the exact same conversation with the exact same people every time they meet. It’s like saying the rosary or humming an ohm. It’s an early agrarian ritual that satisfies a primal need without requiring any of us to decorate our genitals.
And finally, everybody here assumes the person they’re talking to is smarter than they are. But wait, you’re thinking, that’s a statistical impossibility! You’re right of course.
See how that works?
