mrnihil | Social Skills: The Passing Smile (Reply)

There are certain social skills i lack, on account of my being a sociopath- and
it's not that i care that i don't have them, but i do notice when these skills
fail to activate. It usually makes me wonder what's going on in other people's
heads when they see that i didn't perform the secret handshake everyone knows,
because it kind of seems like they're vaguely reacting to my lack of
reciprocation... and while i imagine that most of the flotsam is actually
thinking about Lost, Sarah Palin's tits, and sweet deals at K-Mart, it's
entirely possible they're not completely self-absorbed in their own horrible
tedium. One of the big social skills i don't seem to have is the "Passing
Smile." This is when two people pass each other, often in a hall, and they
politely smile at each other. i'm not clear on the point of this exchange- i
think it's to convey some sense of undeserved camaraderie, as if to say "we're
both in this crazy hallway together, friendo!"

So, i see this approaching smile, and it seems like i should smile back. i feel
some of the muscles in my face move, out of a need for social camouflage, if
nothing else, and all this time, i've been pretty sure that i've been
duplicating a semblance of a smile, cementing this mock-camaraderie just long
enough to suppress any suspicions that i'm a robot or a monster. It turns out,
though, that i absolutely have NOT been doing this.

Curious, i held the expression after a Passing Smile incident, and dashed off to
the nearest mirror- what i see is that there's not even a barely
sort-of-could-be-construed as a smile smile on my face. i'm expressionless,
apparently. i thought it was possible the smile faded in the time it took to
find a mirror, so over the next few Passing Smiles, i studied the feeling in the
muscles around my mouth. Later, i stood in front of a mirror and duplicated
that feeling. Nothing. There's only the absolute slightest shift to the
corners of my mouth. You would need special attention and possibly special
lighting and a magnification played in slow-motion with a side by side of my
normal mouth position to ever notice it.

Fortunately, i've also noticed that many people seem to avert eye contact during
the Passing Smile, which probably lessens the chances of them really noticing my
non-smile. Coupled with the tedium of being them, they're probably actually too
distracted to notice what expression the soulless creature floating past them is
wearing. Maybe they edit the memory and add their own smile. Noticing the lack
of eye-contact, though, raises another issue, because i don't avert my eyes as
we pass. i will look directly into your eye. Not only am i not smiling at you,
i'm staring right into your eyeball. Which i guess might be awkward? In all of
this, i'm realizing that my ability to mimic these social norms isn't very good.

i can't fake it around children, either. Children smile and wave and say "hi."
Instead of smiling, waving, and saying "hi" right back to them, i find myself
either making eye contact, and then ignoring them, or blankly saying "hi" back
to them- a parrot probably sounds more convincing than i do. If i can tell
there's nothing behind my response, i'm pretty sure kids can, too. They may be
almost entirely stupid, but they're fairly intuitive... which is maybe not the
best trade, but it's pretty great when compared to the fact that they'll grow
out of their intuitiveness and be left with only stupidity when they're adults.
i'm wondering, then, if i should practice these things a little, but it seems
like a lot of bother. Eventually, everyone should figure out that i'm
unfriendly, and better than them, thus too important and busy to waste my time
with little bits of etiquette.