Or, let's say you are the driver of a car and see a pedestrian coming towards you on the road. What do you do?
I must clarify the "wave" though. It is not an all out "Hey! I'm over here!" wave, but a nice little hand wave. The driver waves too. Do you have to know the person you just waved at? No, probably not, but it's just something you do when you walk around your neighborhood.
At least in the South. :-)
I've noticed this does not happen in California. In fact, I'm pretty sure it doesn't happen any where else in the USA based off of the comments I have had from my dear Northern friends about this topic.
I think that a walk is a whole lot more pleasant when everyone is friendly.
:-)
I remember being so surprised, confused, and a little daunted by this when I came to Bryan. In SK, you avoid eye contact with anyone walking towards you. It's a holdover from communism and not wanting to draw attention to oneself. Moving to Dayton made me want to run and hide from all these people who'd eye me and wave. WHY ARE THEY WAVING AT ME AND WHAT DO THEY WANT FROM ME?!?! Oh, this is the South. That's what they do. Okay.
ReplyDelete...it just took me a bit to get used to it. : ).
Hahaha! This reminded me of a situation I encountered a couple days ago. Stephen and I were driving and we happened to get behind a truck. I noticed that this truck had something that looked like a tailpipe hanging down beneath the car, almost to the point of dragging on the ground.
ReplyDeleteCultural crisis: Do I roll down my window and tell him, or assume he knows already?!?!? In Ga, we do stuff like that all the time. In fact, I've been the recipient of a couple comments like that. But I'm not in Georgia anymore.
Stephen laughed really hard at me as we drove away. Oh well. I hope that car owner was on his way to a repair shop.
hahaha...that is a cultural crisis! So many new things to learn away from the South. :-)
DeleteI'm trying to remember who from Bryan told the story about when they first moved to Dayton, they were driving from the south end of town towards Bryan and fell asleep at the traffic light just by Dayton City School. They woke up a bit later and found some old guys in an old truck behind them, and I guess the truck followed him to where he stopped because he was able to talk to them and asked, "Why didn't you wake me?" and the men replied with something akin to, "Figured if you were tired enough to fall asleep, you needed it!" So they'd just waited patiently (through several cycles of lights, apparently) for him to wake up.
ReplyDeleteThat is a great story!!
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