#7 "Unspoken Rules" -- Don

I need to start this entry by admitting I’m a bit fuzzy about what exactly we were referring to when we came up with this topic.  The “unspoken” part I get, I guess, because we’re basically talking about stuff that typically goes unsaid or stuff you know is true but that you’ve never had to study for some standardized test. 

It’s the “rules” part that has me a little befuddled.  A “law” is something that compels us to behave in a certain way whether it is enforced by people (i.e. the highway patrol gives you ticket for driving too fast) or Mother Nature (i.e. inertia sucks you off the highway and hurls you down a ravine for driving too fast).  A “truism” is a statement that points out the obvious (i.e. a foul-smelling dog covered in mud is more affectionate then when it is perfectly clean and dry). 

But how do we want to define a “rule”?  I’m going to go with something like “the way things typically go although there may be no particularly good reason for life to happen that way.”  If that definition sounds long and awkward, then it’s because my first example of an “unspoken rule” is “It’s always easier to know what you mean than to say what you mean to someone else.”  Here are a few more:

·      Somehow, inanimate objects know when you are in a hurry and will do everything in their power to make you late.  If there’s a pie that has no greater desire than to land face down on the floor, then you can be certain that it will wait until you’re putting on your coat to find the opportunity to go sailing off a kitchen counter and create a mess than cannot possibly be cleaned up in under five minutes.  Have a particularly important meeting to go to?  Then that’s the morning your car keys are going to hide themselves in the bottom of the laundry bin.

·      Anyone who corrects your grammar in the midst of a casual conversation is being a passive-aggressive weasel.  Seriously.  Whenever I hear someone correct someone else’s English during what should be a relaxed, social gathering, I cringe and wonder how the corrector can know so much about the rules of usage and so little about good manners and common sense.  Anyone who expects everyone else to adhere to the complex (and often contradictory) rules of Standard English while the rest of us are sharing stories over appetizers is in desperate need of some form of validation that can only come from years of therapy.  People who enjoy patrolling as The Grammar Police need to hang up their badges and holsters before walking into restaurants, bars, and backyard barbecues.

·      The scales in the doctor’s office always seem to add three or four more pounds to what you thought you were going to weigh.   The trick is to remember this before going in so you don’t freak out about it in front of the nurse who is recording your weight and who is going to take your blood pressure next.

·      Never ever say out loud to a roomful of people, “Well, I just can’t see how this could get any worse.”  It will get worse.  Nature has an uncanny sense of irony; if you dare Nature to show you how awful life can get, it will take you up on the challenge.  Other phrases to avoid include “Well, I’m glad that’s over,” and “I guess we got lucky.”  Furthermore, if someone says, “You can’t miss it,” while they are giving you directions, you might as well turn around and go home because you’re going to miss it.

·      The best way to ruin a holiday family gathering is to start a four-hour board game.  This is especially true if I’m being coaxed into playing it.  I don’t know how it happens, but somewhere in the midst of the game, I’m going to get mean and vindictive, and I’ll start making threats that will have repercussions for weeks to come.  Honestly, we’re better off watching that Muppet video for the umpteen hundredth time, and that way nobody’s getting hurt.

·       If, when pulling food from the refrigerator, something has some age on it and it looks bad, then there’s no need to smell it before chucking it in the garbage.  Furthermore, if it smells bad, there’s no need to taste it.  I don’t know why, but I’m a complete idiot when I pull bad food out of the refrigerator.  There could be some long-forgotten leftovers in an old margarine tub that got pushed behind a pickle jar months ago, and despite the green moldy advanced civilization growing on the top of it, I’ll still give into that weird compulsion I have to stick my nose in it to find out just how bad it smells.  If there were medication for this disorder, I believe I would take it.  I wish I knew why it is that if I sniff the milk and it clearly has the aroma of a gym locker, I cannot stop myself from taking a mouthful just to prove that “yes, indeedy, this milk is no longer fit for human consumption.”

As I wrap up this entry, I’m really thinking when it comes to “unspoken rules” that the older we get, the fewer specific rules we need to keep us inline because we get better at seeing trouble coming and we take better precautions to keep out of its way.  Perhaps it’s more of a maxim than rule, but I’ve found that “Staying out of trouble takes less energy than dealing with the consequences of trying to get away with anything.”   In other words, I’d like to think that I’m a good person because I have a deep commitments to my moral standards, but when you get right down to it, it might just be because I’m just too lazy to be dishonest or I know I’m just too incompetent to be a criminal.