A Dilemma & Other Things

Picture this:

You are out one night and someone comes up to you with an obvious look of recognition on their face. "Hey!" they call out excitedly. "Remember me? It's been forever! How have you been?" Nervously you scan their face and hope for some clue to who they are because you don't remember ever seeing them before in your life. No luck. After those three seconds of shock do you...

a) Give them a big hug and lie about how much you have missed them (whoever they are) and risk being caught in your lie.

b) Awkwardly stammer out an "Umm sorry I don't remember you at all" and risk hurting potentially delicate feelings.

c) Run for your life.

This is a problem I have a lot. And I never know what to do. Some people when making decisions say to always go with your gut. But by then my gut has already taken option c and as much as I want to follow it it's already too late. What do you do when something like this happens? What do you say?


Anyways, to put a totally different spin on things, we watched this cool documentary on baboons and their behaviours in psychology today. The narrator spoke about how influential a first greeting is to them; how it could determine the way the relationship between two baboons become by that first time they meet each other. And as one baboon strolled cautiously toward another, you could almost feel the hush over the surrounding savanna. I almost held my breath, hoping for a good first impression. The narrator stopped speaking too, expectant. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, the baboon reached the other one, slapped its butt, and then ran away. The other baboon whipped around, saw who slapped it, and then sat down. The narrator continued matter-of-factly on about how important those greetings were. It showed more examples of "greetings" made by other baboons, and it took a while for me to catch on that this was how they normally greet each other. Can you imagine! David Susuki, the narrator, spoke about how alike we are to baboons. How alike I thought. And yet how very different..