I get out of class at 1 and slide through the rain to my dorm room. About twenty yards in front of me a girl and a guy walk side by side, pushing one another back and forth; play fighting. Nearly the whole time I watch them they alternately glance up at me and make eye contact. He boots her off the sidewalk and looks up at me. Then she pushes him back and laughs, looking straight into my eyes. Then they both look up for as if for confirmation from me. Except, I have no idea why. Push, shove, eye contact. Chuckle, giggle, eye contact. Push, eye contact. I pass them. Eye contact.
What the heck? I'm thinking. Why do they keep looking at me? I'm not even involved in the game. They don't know me. I don't know them. Maybe it has to do with me smiling at them? Or maybe it has to do with the fact that they are newly "together" and very aware of the fact.
Whatever it is, it's got me thinking about how much eye contact confirms things for us. To know what someone is really saying or thinking, it's almost mandatory to make eye contact to understand them. But I didn't have a clue what was going on with them.
Still don't.
Weird stuff.
1 comment:
I'm in this "Intercultural Communication" class this term, and I think it'd be really fun to be in that class with you. One of the most interesting things we've talked about is body language.
'Course, we've mostly been talking about it in the context of communicating between different cultures and how easily body language can communicate vastly different things between different cultures. But still, it's crazy what you can say with your eyes, your walking gate, your smile or even your stance. All the little things add up and say something.
Super interesting.
Makes me kinda self-conscious if I think about it too much, though, because then I wonder what messages I'm sending with my body language without meaning too.
Maybe that's what that couple was doing: sending a message of self-awareness without consciously meaning to.
(I feel a little less weird knowing that somebody else thinks about stuff like this. Heh...)
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