I need a ruling . . . letting people in

Here’s one that has perplexed me for a long time. I need a ruling on the question of what is the most “courteous” course of action in the following situation. For some reason I find myself thinking counter to conventional practice on this matter.

I’m on my way home from work, and for reasons I’ve never been able to explain, traffic always seems to get worse in the spring. There is a particular traffic light on my commute that gets notoriously backed up. I’d say anywhere from 60-80 cars wait at the light in one lane, and about a dozen make it through at each green light. So the train of automobiles meanders back for about a quarter mile.

Now, the thing is, there just happens to be a 7-11 at this intersection. And, as you might imagine, during this busy time of day, motorists are exiting the 7-11 parking lot to get back on the road. To do this, they must turn onto the busy road that I am on, entering the traffic just before the light, and ahead of the 60-80 cars that are already waiting there.

You’ve been in this situation before, haven’t you? To be “courteous,” drivers allow people in, that is, they allow them onto the road from the 7-11. But by doing so, this just makes the traffic situation worse for everyone else.

So here is the question that riddles my mind. If I am nice to one person wanting to get on the road, am I not at the same time being rude to dozens of people behind me who have been waiting patiently for much longer than the 7-11 exitee?

If I charge right through the intersection without letting the person in, I may appear rude to that person, but in fact, I am being courteous to many people. And in a sense, I would just be “being fair” to the one person. After all, if they waited for seven to ten minutes to get onto the road, they would have waited just as long as everyone else.

In a nutshell, the way I think about it, I am being nice to 60-80 people, instead of showing special treatment to one. The “greater good” concept seems to apply here, doesn’t it?

You might be wondering what I really do in practice. Well, to be totally honest, a lot of times, despite my bold intentions, I “chicken out” at the last minute and let the person in. But believe me, I’m not happy about it. A few times I have stuck to my guns and not let the person in. But in these cases, I: (1) have felt a little like a jerk for not letting the person in (despite what I have reasoned here), or (2) have noticed that the next guy behind me lets the person in, so nothing is really gained anyway.

So as I see it, unless everyone subscribes to my logic, nothing will really change. And such a change, of course, will never happen. But please tell me that I at least have a valid idea that the “better” course of action is to be courteous to the many rather than being preferential to just one. At least I can be right in theory.

I need a ruling . . .

I need a ruling . . . holding the door

I was surprised to have received quite a bit of feedback and conversation on my last “I need a ruling” segment. If you recall, that entry dealt with what to do when someone has a sneezing fit. Do you keep saying “Bless you” over and over and over? I continue to work on two strategies. One is to have a “two ‘Bless you’” limit, after which the sneezer is on his or her own. The other is to wait until the entire fit is over, then to give one “blanket ‘Bless you’” to cover all the sneezes in the series. I’m not sure which one I like better. I continue to experiment.

Meanwhile, here’s another one that drives me crazy (in terms of the inner torment I incur by thinking of seeming trivialities in such excruciating detail). In a nutshell, the question is: When entering the door of a building/office/store/etc., how far behind you must a person be in order for you to be obliged to hold the door for him or her?

The reason I ponder this is two-fold, really. First, I don’t want to be impolite and not hold a door for a person when I should. Second, though, is that people often hold a door open for me when I am far, far away from the door. I then feel an unspoken compulsion to walk faster to get to the door, grab hold of it, and thank the person. The thing is, I feel a little put out because I’d really prefer to saunter to the door at my own pace. But instead, I have to change what I am doing in order to accommodate someone who is trying to be nice to me. Do you see what I’m saying? In such an instance, I think it would be nicer if the person just went on his or her way and did not hold the door for me.

Think of it this way. If a person was walking three feet behind you, you would not think twice about extending the common courtesy of holding the door. But if a person was one hundred feet behind you, you would not hold the door—the thought of doing so wouldn’t even cross your mind because of the great distance.

Somewhere in between there exists what I call the “ambiguous zone.” For me, it is, say, about twenty to thirty feet. I often find myself approaching a door, knowing that someone is in that area of uncertainty. Questions begin to besiege my mind. Just how far back is the person? Are his hands full? Is he gaining on me, or am I opening on him? Should I ignore his presence back there and just blast through the door on my own? But I don’t want to be rude. If he thinks he is within a fair distance to receive such a courtesy, and I don’t give it, he might think I’m impolite. On the other hand, if I stop to hold the door, and he is further back than I thought, it could be awkward as I stand there, holding the door and waiting.

I have tentatively settled on a rule of thumb of about fifteen to twenty feet (five to seven adult paces) as the maximum distance for holding a door (barring any obvious extenuating circumstances). Anything less than this distance provides a flow of interaction where a courtesy and greeting can be naturally extended. Once you get beyond that distance, things become a bit strained, even awkward, and the courtesy you wish to extend may not even be wanted. But I must admit, even this tentative practice leaves me uncomfortable and uncertain at times.

Well, what do you say? I am overthinking the whole thing, right? There’s really no need to apply this kind of analysis to an event that lasts only a few seconds, is there?

Can I get a ruling on this?

I need a ruling . . . sneezing fits

I’ve mentioned before that I often find myself preoccupied giving inordinate amounts of thought to relatively minor issues, and that it drives me crazy. If I could just get an official ruling on such matters, life would be so much easier. Take sneezing for example. It is winter. ‘Tis the season for sneezing, and lots of it. Everywhere you go, people have colds. So, consider the following typical situation at work.

Somebody sneezes, so I say “Bless you.” Three seconds later they sneeze again, so I politely say “Bless you” again. Then they sneeze a third time, and so on. At some point, usually about the third or fourth sneeze, I, like most people, feel some unspoken obligation to add in some witty expression of surprise, even though sneezing fits are quite common. Sneezing fits can last for three, four, or five sneezes, or sometimes longer.

My question is, what is the obligation of the “blesser” (the person saying “Bless you”)? Well, first of all, why do we even say “Bless you” in the first place? Yes, I know, it’s because centuries ago people thought that by sneezing a person was expelling evil spirits blah blah blah. I’m asking why we still do it in the 21st century. It makes no sense to me. I know, I know, we do it to be polite, and because that’s the thing that people in our culture say when someone sneezes (except for those who wish to get fancy and pull out the German “Gesundheit”). It still doesn’t really make sense to me.

But getting back to my question, what is my obligation for responding? On the first or second sneeze it’s no big deal, but am I the only person out there who, by the fourth or fifth sneeze is thinking, “Okay, let’s wrap it up there, buddy. Time to move on.”? I’m kidding, because sneezing is an involuntary act that cannot be helped. Nevertheless, at times I do find myself contemplating questions like: Why am I doing this? This makes no sense. And I start feeling pressure to come up with a good one-liner like, “Wow, looks like you got yourself a little bit of a cold there” or “Sounds like somebody didn’t get their swine flu shot, eh?”

So, I’m working on a few strategies.

My first strategy is the “two ‘Bless you’ limit” strategy. For all sneezing fits, after the second sneeze, you are on your own, you will get no more blessings from me. I’m going back to work. This has the advantage of showing concern, yet avoiding excessive redundancy and awkwardness. On the other hand, this strategy runs the risk of being construed as heartless and socially unacceptable, leaving a person precariously unblessed for an undetermined number of sneezes, which could invite any number of harmful consequences. I’ll have to see how it works in practice.

My second strategy is the “wait until they are done” strategy. After a person sneezes, I will not say “Bless you” right away, but wait a few seconds. If it turns into a sneezing fit, I will wait until I am reasonably sure that they are all finished, then give one blanket “Bless you” to cover all of the sneezes in the chain. The main drawback to this strategy is that in a larger group, others are liable to jump in at the beginning, thus obviating the need for me to give the final blessing (and also robbing me of credit for this great plan). On the other hand, if others jump in first, then the blessing is taken care of and I can wash my hands of the whole matter altogether.

If these two strategies fail, I may come up with a new one, or grudgingly revert to the status quo.

At some point I’ll give you an update to let you know how my little experiment is working. In the meantime, which strategy do you think is better?

I need a ruling . . . The 12 days of Christmas

I find myself often devoting an inordinate amount of mental activity to very trivial matters and circumstances. It’s not healthy. Believe me, the things I am referring to are very trivial. And I will certainly elaborate on some of them in future blog entries. I think I will place such entries under the title “I need a ruling.” That is to say, I need a ruling on the matter, so that I can finally stop torturing myself by overanalyzing such inane things.

For today, though, I need a ruling on the song “The 12 Days of Christmas.” A few years ago, at a Christmas party, the host, a friend of mine, put together a fun game of Christmas “brain-teasers.” One of the questions was: What is the total number of gifts that “my true love gave to me” (during the 12 days of Christmas)? The problem is, I was convinced I had the right answer, but it was ruled as incorrect.

Here’s my answer. Day one, a partridge, that’s one gift. Day two, two turtledoves, that’s two more, for a total of three. Day three, three French hens, that’s three more, for a running total of six. And so on. So the total number of gifts would be 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + all the way up to + 12. That makes 78 gifts in all. Makes sense, right?

But my friend told me that the correct answer is really 364. How in the world do you get to 364? Here’s the logic behind this answer. Day one, a partridge, that’s one gift. Then the lyrics say, “On the second day of Christmas, my true love gave to me, two turtle doves and a partridge in a pear tree.” That is, the second day’s gifts included all that is mentioned in that line, i.e. another partridge. Following this logic, day three would have included six gifts: three French hens, two (more) turtledoves, and one (more) partridge in a pear tree. In other words, by the twelfth day, the recipient has received 12 partridges in all, 22 turtle doves in all (2 x 11), etc. Get it? So the total number of gifts would be 1 + 3 + 6 + 10 + all the way up to + 78 = 364 gifts.

But I strenuously object to the 364 answer. The argument in support of it, obviously, is that it takes the words of the song in an exact, literal fashion. On each day, the true love gives the whole laundry list of gifts, not just the new item for that day.

But I think this is absurd, and is definitely not the intended meaning of this song. First of all, why would anyone want to give, or receive, any of these gifts in such abundance (except, of course, the golden rings)? If the 364 answer is right, then by the end of it all, the beloved has received, for example, a total of forty maids a milking (8 x 5) and forty-two geese a laying (6 x 7). Or think about this. By the end of the twelve days, between the ladies dancing and maids a milking, the recipient has received 76 women (awkward, dangerous), and between the swans, geese, calling birds, hens, doves, and partridges, there are a total of 184 birds flying around in the house (can you say “Animal Rescue?”).

I have no problem seeing each day’s gift as being a new item, and that item alone. I have no problem not taking the song literally, as the 364-ists believe. We say a lot of things in our lives that are not meant to be taken literally, and we all understand the intended meaning. In my view, each stanza of the song announces the particular gift for that day, then embarks on a joyous recapitulation of all the gifts given to date. After all, if you received these things from your “true love,” you’d certainly want to rehash such fond memories, wouldn’t you?

Anyway, see what I mean about devoting inordinate amounts of time to the contemplation of trivialities? Can I get a ruling on this?