Onward ho!

We humans are weird.

We have conquered the highest mountains, explored the deepest seas, and have even flung ourselves in tin cans to the Moon and back, and lived to tell the tale.

And yet, we still haven’t figured out a proper way to greet someone who’s walking down a long, long hallway towards us, that isn’t awkward.

So there’s the two of you, on either side of the long, long hallway. Do you keep eye contact all the way, do you intently observe the lighting switches on the walls as you pass by, until you’re within earshot to say “Hi”? Or do you pretend to fiddle with your phone, until the crucial distance is reached? Won’t the other guy know that you’ve pulled out your phone just to avoid eye contact? Also, when exactly – between sighting your colleague and walking past him – do you have to start smiling? Do you smile early on, in which case the other guy may feel you’re eager to see him (which also means you may have a job/favor to be done, which means he’ll have to chalk up an escape plan pronto)? Or until you’re close enough to see the zits on his face, which simply makes the walk up till that point all the more awkward?

Or do you – as a colleague from the days of old loved doing – shout out a hello from afar, and continue with small talk in the same pleasantly boisterous manner, and let everybody on the floor know about the other guy’s secret crush on the girl by the copier machine?

Walking past one another in a long, long hallway – where all known laws of civil discourse break down.

There is no tribute I can give my dad that will ever do him justice. I would never have told him this, and now I never can: that I’m so proud of him. He was a good man. A great man. Despite being a single parent, despite the amputations, despite the crushing poverty, he raised three kids to be far, far from the fuck-ups that everybody else predicted we’d be. He did twice what any man with legs could do, and was three times what any dad could hope to be.

Good bye, Daddy. You did great.