The social norm I choose to break is conversations. I broke the norm by singing my conversations, instead of normally speaking it. In this case, I merely kept it small, keeping it to my sister and my neighbours.
With my sister, for a day, I only sang conversations with her. Even simple sentences such as, “Pass the ketchup”, were done in sing-songy way. With my neighbours, what I did was simply sing my greetings to them. In fact, I said good morning or evening to them to the tune of Happy Birthday. I even tried with the cashier at the nearby 7-Eleven, when nobody else was around.
The reaction was near unanimous. My neighbours gave me a weirded-out look, as did the cashier. My sister, who bore the brunt of my experiment, threatened to “smack my head off” if I didn’t stop.
Honestly, I was split two ways about my feelings about this experiment. On the one hand, I kind of enjoyed messing around with them. I was even tempted to not just sing it quietly, but do so loudly and dramatically, Broadway style. But the other, more rational side quickly considered this silly, and this side made me feel more embarrassed than anything.
The norm, of course, is to speak clearly, in a way that would make your point understood. Singing your conversations out simply serves as an annoying distraction. I did all this in a safe environment. Had I did it in a less forgiving one, I would most definitely have been instantly hated.
So what other social norm would you like to break?
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