This Spring and Summer I've been a fairly consistent runner. I tend to run at lesser populated times - just after the early morning rush during the week, or right at the dinner hour. And for some reason when I've run on Saturdays it's not been good weather.
Today was different - the paths were packed and I crossed paths with families and dogs and bikers and meanderers as well as a few other runners.
In this area, unless the other person avidly avoids eye contact, everyone gives a greeting as you pass one another. Usually I puff out a "hey" or "hi" in my exhale...saving my breath as I trudge along...and that has seemed to be perfectly acceptable - in fact what many other people do.
But, I believe I just discovered a secret that everybody but myself knows - Saturday mornings it is considered proper etiquette to issue an entire "Good Morning" to all you meet. Even as bikers race by a "good morning" is tossed back. If you pass families ambling down the path it's proper to greet each single person - one "good morning" for the group is quite rude.
Near the beginning of my run, as I discovered this "good-morning-itis" I started to stretch my "hey" to "hey-llo" and near the end I actually started to say "good morning."
I no longer blink when someone calls a drinking fountain a "bubbler" or an ATM machine a "tyme machine" (no, not time machine...which is what I thought they were saying - Tyme is the brand name, like Kleenex is to tissue). I'm getting used to and even picking up some of the idiosyncrasies of the area - but, I guess there are some things yet to discover.
Good Morning.
1 comment:
Imagine the reaction I got when first moved out of Wisconsin and asked the very freaked-out Missourians: "Where's the nearest Tyme machine?"
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