The Weirdest Social Rule Nobody Taught Us

By Cora Lee

Nobody ever taught you that you can’t sit directly next to someone on a mostly empty bus. There was no lesson in school teaching you to leave one empty seat between yourself and a classmate. No teacher explained that if a person is walking toward you in a hallway, both people are supposed to move slightly to the side. And yet somehow, we all know. These rules aren’t written anywhere. They’re just understood.

For example, seating. If there are ten empty seats and one person is sitting in the middle of a row, most people aren’t going to sit directly beside them; at most, one seat apart. If someone does sit next to the person anyway, it feels odd and intentional even though they haven’t done anything wrong. 

Or if someone texts that we should hang out sometime and you respond agreeing with them. You both know that it isn’t a plan, more like something you say. However, if someone starts asking about a date, it becomes much more realistic. It’s similar to “How are you?” in America. You aren’t really asking them; it's more like saying it as a greeting.

That’s the weird thing about these rules: there is no guidebook that tells us we need to do these things. They are interesting in that way. We spend a huge part of our lives following instructions that nobody actually gave us. We learn by watching others and reinforce them by following them ourselves. So the next time something like this happens, remember: nobody told you to do that; you just knew.