We’ve never met before, but we may look familiar to each other.
Now, I’ll shake your hand, firmly but not too firmly. Then I’ll make eye-contact, smile, let go of hand, fade smile, say something like, “How’s it going?”
You’ll say, “Good, what about you?” I’m probably good too, though I likely wouldn’t tell you if I wasn’t.
I might also say, “It’s nice to meet you,” and you’ll probably throw it back at me, telling me how nice it is to meet me. But do you know me? Don’t look so startled — it’s just that you’ve barely even met me!
Hopefully, our conversation will move past a mutual acknowledgement that we are both doing well, but if it doesn’t, I could try to escape with something like, “So, we’re both good. Good. I’m gonna go find my friend. Nice to meet you.”
And then, of course, I’d scurry out and try to blend in with the crowds and avoid you for the rest of the night.
Meeting people is, to channel Holden Caulfield for a moment, phony. But it’s also polite, and I suppose there’s value in being polite, so I won’t make any attempts at being a modern-day Bartleby. I’d rather not, at least.
Phoniness aside, I think that meeting new people is one of the most enjoyable things a person can do.
Yet, as many have noted on this page, the eagerness of people to introduce themselves to those they don’t know fades significantly after Freshman Week. Not much else explains why my morning commute to class is a tiptoe around awkward social evasions and my seemingly incorrigible double takes.
Every morning, I pull myself out of bed, wobble out to the Holder courtyard and make my way to class. And every morning, I see the same people, again and again. With possibly more than ten of those people, I find myself in this gray area between what I call “Hello, how are you?” friendships and the “If you pat me on the shoulder I’ll scream, ‘P-Safe’ ” strangers. We’re not at the point yet that we can say hi to each other, but smiling seems to be the language of the friend limbo in which we find each other. I want more than a mere smile; I want a “Hello, how are you?”
My fellow Princetonians, I have a solution to eradicating the awkwardness of familiar strangers. It’s called Name Tag Day, and you will love it — or you will be made to love it.
If you guessed that on Name Tag Day we all wear name tags … you were right! Yes, the people of Princeton University will hereby license the USG politburo, the vanguard of Princeton students, to require all students to wear nametags on the first day of the spring semester.
On this, the glorious Name Tag Day, all students will have a formal requirement to introduce themselves to everyone they come into contact with. Seriously — everyone. Looking at the clouds to evade eye contact will not suffice as a defense. Looking at your cell phone and pretending to read text messages or e-mails will also not be tolerated. There will be no exceptions and there will be no excuses.
And what for those who threaten public tranquility through their passive defiance, you, my humble reader, inquire? Swift, mighty justice will be handed down from Him, the Supreme Leader, The Yaro, who will render justice with a nimble hand and nifty web applications.
Viceroy Malkiel and her enforcer, Skipper, will manage Operation Friend Inflation, in which there will be a strict quota of 35 people that you should meet in a given day. The quota is suggested since 35 people is a good ballpark estimate, and though it isn’t required, you might think twice about defiance. I hear Skipper bites.
I can see it now. I’m walking through the Holder archway and I see one of my socially deficient neighbors. His name tag, my name tag — tokens of our shared heritage and allegiances.
I speak. Words that have been held back for too long now leap out of me. “Hi, my name’s Peter. How about those bread lines?”
Peter Zakin is a sophomore from New York, N.Y. He can be reached at pzakin@princeton.edu.
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