The Nod

It happens nearly every time I’m there. I’ll be walking through the grocery store and spot a familiar face- familiar enough to acknowledge but not quite enough to stop and talk to. You know the feeling.

For a lady reading this, I suppose what I’m about to discuss is completely foreign. They likely have a strategy for situations like this- similar to something out of a blind man’s sketchpad. No route is too redirected or random if they see an awkwardly familiar face.

Guy’s are different though. The only strategy we have in a grocery store is how quickly we can make it back to the car, as if every trip to get milk is an opportunity to make it into the Olympics of speed shopping.

Inevitably we get caught off guard though. A familiar face emerges and we resort to that quick draw greeting called the head nod. The debate of it all is the direction of the nod though. A nod up and a nod down are two entirely different things.

On one hand, either is acceptable to some degree. They both mean the same thing. But either way I wind up feeling a bit disgusted with myself. If I go up I feel like I’m making frat laps at the bar, but if I go down I question everything. Like did I just cast a spell on that dude? …Got me looking like “I dream of Genie” out here.

No, it seems the only appropriate thing for us fellas is to avoid the nod all together. High fives only from this moment forward.