The Loss of the ‘Casual Hello’

A few years back, the Ipod came out and it seems, with it, we lost many opportunities for, what I’ll call, the ‘casual hello.’  The setup for this is simple:  Remember, ‘back in the day,’ when somebody would walk by and you could look up, or walk up to them, and say, ‘hello?’  Remember  that?  I’m a little concerned that this isn’t happening as much because people have devices like ipods playing so often.  I have many concerns about the constant listening to music.  Besides ‘Hellos,’ people are missing out on birds, and traffic, foreign languages of tourists, even the impact of their own feet as they pace across the campus, but it’s the loss of real interaction that scares.  With the Ipod going, it’s not just a loss of environment, but of another person’s agency, their ability to affect your world.  Specifically, the troubling trend is that people have things in their ears, and they can’t hear me.  I wanted to look at this and see what was going on.

Let me start by explaining what I mean by the ‘casual hello.’  This hello usually occurs between two people who don’t know each other well enough to automatically smile when they see each other.  It is the hello between strangers or, at most, accidental acquaintances like your postman or the girl who sits third row up in your Philosophy of Mind lecture.  Sometimes it’s just the hello you might give the person passing by with the nice face.  This is the hello that isn’t expected.  Its attitude, its presentation, ranges between politeness and desire.  At best, it is good upbringing, the way we imagine everyone in Idaho acting as they tend their vegetable gardens and marvel at the horseless carriage.  At worst, this hello is the swarthy gentleman on 3rd Street who, asking for a bit of spare change at four in the morning, peers left and right to see if anyone might prevent him from successfully mugging you.

But if we take this ‘casual hello’ to be the type of social accident that’s worth keeping alive (and I do), it’s like the four year old I met one morning walking back from the parking garage.  It was, from my perspective, a spontaneous hello; I could have just as easily walked by him and not stopped to think about anything more than how difficult walking up a hill is in the morning compared to staying in bed.

“Hello,” he said, as though he was waiting for me.  He was alone at the top of a short stoop.  His parent, I figured, must have been just inside of the open doorway, busy with one more little thing, and he stood there, happily enough, swinging the weight of an oversized, green backpack about his shoulders.

“Oh, hello,” I said to the little boy.  I like little kids, and feel all kinds of innocence and benevolence when speaking with them, but I’m always just a little bit wary that their parents will assume the worst of an out-of-breath young-man with a beard who stops to converse with their toddler.

“I have a frog backpack,” he asserted proudly, and swung it around to show off the large, pouch eyes and little flaps for what I assumed must represent frog ears.

I tried to remember if frogs had ears and, realizing that I didn’t have any resources in my memory for frog anatomy, I thought back to any cartoons I had seen or other drawings that might suggest that it was at least appropriate to draw them that way.  All I could remember was the dancing, singing frog from a Merry Melody; the one where the man finds this amazingly talented frog in some back-alley and, every time he tries to show off its skills to agents or venue owners or whatever, the frog just sits there, not singing, not dancing, almost dead in its lifeless, talentless display.  Of course that frog was anthropomorphized something terrible, even dawning a top hat and cane at one point as it swings through the grand finale of the “Michigan Rag.”  But I didn’t remember even it having any ears.  ‘Of course frogs must have ears,’ I thought, ‘or else why would they ribbit, unless of course they weren’t ribbiting for the point of the noise, like maybe they were just clearing their throats or something, and the ribbit, which they, as a species, were oblivious to, was just a happy accident that we foolish humans believe is frog for “good afternoon.”’  And it was about that time that the mother came out and scooted her little son off to the car for school.  “It’s a very nice backpack!” I called out quickly, seeing him on his way.

“Thank you.” he said, looking the other direction as though moving to the next talk-show caller, and moved up in to his car seat without any further suggestion that we had any business talking.

It was an interesting little exchange, and though I wouldn’t claim any great revelations from it nor seminal epiphanies, apart from my sudden need to get my hands on zoology textbook, it was rather cute, and I mentioned it to my girlfriend later.  I was glad that it had happened.  It was a nice, little, happy accident.  Without needing to dissect the instance, how it has affected me, or move onto some kind of butterfly effect theory where that single ‘hello’ may have lead to my eventual escape from some future prison in an ‘Escape from LA’ type scenario, I feel confident that there was definitely some positive value to it.  I submit this example, then, to establish a base level, a simple example of positive value in the social intercourse of the ‘casual hello.’  There was a nice little turn of events for me, something I’m glad happened, something I wasn’t looking for, but which presented itself to me.  Where the ‘casual hello’ really came into play for me, though, and how I started noticing that it was becoming more and more difficult to have, was within an entirely different context: meeting girls.

I first noticed that this ‘casual hello’ was losing out a few years back in my undergrad.  I was a big fan of sitting on the benches in the middle of campus where, every hour on the hour, a wave of students would walk by, strolling between their classes.  I liked having a ‘casual smoke’ (more on the ‘casual smoke’ in another essay) and watching people, what they were wearing, the books they held and, like with any people-watching, the pretty ones caught my attention.  As is common among my gender, I yearned to talk with the cuter girls.  There was one girl, in particular, who I noticed sometimes when I left my Aristotle lecture, and I’d think up all kinds of ways to say hello.

Any guy will tell you about the nerve it takes to approach someone or even strike up a conversation; the fear of rejection is, often times, stronger than the desire mate, and you just sit or stand there, unable to do anything but watch them pass you by and convince yourself that there is something more important to be doing than meeting with fate.  But, sometimes, you have to try, and college is a place where opportunity for a ‘casual hello’ is just bound to present itself.  I wasn’t a constant “hello-er”, ever positioning myself in rough proximity to the path of some unsuspecting stranger, waiting to pounce on them with an introduction.  I just liked meeting new people, and I’ve always been intrigued by all of the potential, that excitement and possibility, that comes with getting to know an attractive stranger.

The process was, if not daunting, at least simple.  If I saw a cute girl, I could say hello to her.  It’s all about being confident, cool, measured tones.  I say hello, politely and unobtrusively and, assuming they say hello back, our conversation can begin gently and slowly, as any new relationship wants.  That’s the goal on my part, but the girl, having received the ‘hello,’ has all kinds of options that she can feel good about.  She can ignore you and pretend not to hear, a response no decent man would resent.  She can say hello back and keep on walking.  (There are endless amounts of coyness possible with this last one: she could keep walking, but smile, maybe change her walk up a little, or just laugh.  Of course, I’m a fan of the hello with the ‘knowing glance,’ like you read about in trashy magazines, which seems completely mythical, and roughly equivalent to popping by the corner store and picking up a half-gallon of milk, pack of cigarettes, and Marilyn Monroe.)  And yes, she can even, in the rarest of circumstances, stop, and have a chat, and find you charming, and make plans for dinner, a movie, and babies in the near future.

This approach is like any where two unknown animals meet.  Respect is shown, a bit of head bobbing, the two size each other up and decisions are made as to how to proceed based on facial cues and the direction of the wind.  The ‘casual hello’ is really just the beginning of a whole range of procedures.  But what if they can’t hear that ‘hello?’

The thing about the ‘casual hello,’ its essence, is that it is unexpected and, almost by definition, unsolicited.  Nobody asks for it, so saying hello to a stranger or almost-stranger needs to occur with as little pretence or investment as possible on the part of the hello-er.  Otherwise, it carries too much social weight and obligation.

Still, this delicate beginning worked fairly well, up until around Christmas of 2004.  The Ipod, now in its 4th generation, was taking off.  No longer a frontier to the scouts of technology, everyone had to have one.  There was an immediate and almost universal demand to have every song from every album you’ve ever heard or heard of stored neatly into a stylishly white paperweight that came with matching ear-buds.  People wanted soundtracks to their lives.  The walkman made music portable, albeit a bit of a process as you fast-forwarded and rewound for twice as long as the hit track’s actual length.  The Disc-man changed all that, and now we had our three favorite songs in an album of twelve.  But we were still limited by storage.  Sure, the discs were relatively thin, but who had room for a book of them?  The Ipod meant you had everything.  Each person was their own National Library and it seemed, with the opportunity for endless song, there became a kind of eerie, almost zealous need for listening to music all the time.

For the purposes of our focus here, what happened in the loss of the ‘casual hello’ is that people started putting things into their ears.  This makes it really difficult to hear the ‘casual hello.’ Now, this same cute girl who passed me in the hall on the way out of my Aristotle lecture, she has things in her ears.  I’m hello-ing my ass off, to no avail. All the confidence of tone in the world, but, for her, Joanna Newsom is singing something just fanciful enough to accent her mood for the O-Chem lecture she’s walking to.  Since she can’t hear me, I have to hurry to get in front of her, or, god forbid the awkwardness, I could tap her on the shoulder to steal her attention.  Now, I’ve not only established direct and meaningful eye-contact, but have physically put my hands on her.  At this point the word ‘hello’ is almost a shocking understatement.  Having stalked the poor dear and then assaulted her body, I had better damn well have something important to say about her shoes being on fire to warrant all of this surprising attention.  ‘Hello,’ at this point, is entirely beyond the point.  Now the simple action of meeting someone is blown to a proportion wholly unsuitable for subtle courting.  ‘Hello,’ becomes, ‘AHOY! GODDAM YOU!  THIS IS MY FACE AND THIS IS ME SMILING.  ACKNOWLEDGE THAT I’M A MAN AND LET’S GET ON WITH THE INTERCOURSE!’

And maybe a cleverer man than I can adapt to this.  Am I stuck in the past, beholden to ancient customs and encounters?  Are the young men and women of today learning some new technique for grabbing the focus of the attractive away from their private concerts?  If so, I can’t but imagine some surreptitious chase, some obnoxious advertisement on their part, the way cell-phone outlets now have a dancing man with a painted arrow that, in so many words, says to drivers, “Forget the red-light, turn left for free wireless upgrades.”   Even if people are somehow getting through the ear-buds, it seems sad to me to miss out on meeting someone so innocently as one new voice piquing the attention of a pair of unfamiliar ears.

I’ve asked some girls about this.  “But don’t you see that now I couldn’t meet you if I wanted to?  And it’s not just you: There’s people all over the world, not being approached, not being met or casually greeted, because they’ve got stuff in there ears and can’t hear anyone saying anything to them.”

“Maybe I don’t want to be met,” one said.  It’s a good point.  I can’t imagine what it must be like to be a creature with supple features, everyone asking where you’re going all the time, what you’re doing, and if you want to know them.  I like meeting people, but I’ll admit, I like meeting them on my terms, and there are times when say, at the end of a long night at a bar or something, I would just as soon say, “Fuck off…” as ‘hello’ to a stranger who had an idea to meet me.  I tell my attractive friends that, as a rule, if a male is speaking to them, it’s because they want sex.  That’s not always the case, but it’s a good starting point for them to consider when entering in on any conversation.

I think about this, and while we’re chatting over a beer, I notice all the feelings of protection I feel for my girlfriend creep in.  That asshole at the other end of the bar keeps looking this way, and I’m just sure he’s going to say hello to Lindsey.  What an asshole.  And just as I think to switch seats, making it harder for him to come by and say, ‘hello,’ it dawns on me.  “Wait a second, that’s how we met.  I just walked up to you and we started talking.”

“Yeah, but you were cool.”

“So what, whenever you want to meet someone cool, you take out the ear-buds, but then as soon as you’re feeling shy, on with the Morrissey?”

“Of course not,” she says, with a knowing-glance and, after that, there isn’t need for much more discussion.  It’s fine if a person wants to be in their own world.  In that case, the ipod is the same as staying at home, or wearing a baggy sweater, or just walking with your head, pretending not to hear someone.  It’s a conscious choice.  The trouble is when people don’t realize all of the social potential they’re missing out on; they haven’t considered the social ramifications of enjoying a bit of music while they stroll.  Yes, having your own soundtrack will accent the course you are on, will brighten it, deepen it, and maybe even allow you to feel it more, but it won’t ever change the course.  It won’t stop you on a walk up a hill, and show you an admirable back-pack, it won’t ask for your number and lead you to an entirely new relationship.  It’s true, there’s less chance for that shady encounter, maybe fewer muggings or awkward rejections, but to shut all these options out entirely, to not allow for the stranger to work up the nerve, seems far too great a loss to me.  The ‘interesting’ in an interesting life, comes from openness to opportunity and ‘openness’ means unplugging the music, looking about, and perhaps initiating a ‘casual hello’ of your own.

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