Having just encountered a strange guy in the stairwell on my sixth trip to the bathroom today (I have purposefully been chugging large amounts of water in an effort to take many bathroom trips and thus make the day go faster), I realized that I very rarely look people in the eye if I don’t really know them. I don’t know if this is like alpha dog—or, no, that’s not right, what’s less than alpha dog, beta dog?—behavior, because I know that, as the alpha dog, you’re always supposed to stare down your adversary in an effort to show dominance—but I totally can’t do it.This once got me into trouble at the day spa, when one day I was feeling shifty and would not look my boss in the eye, and she called me on it. “Is something wrong? What aren’t you telling me? Why won’t you look me in the eye? Did you do something wrong?” Which I hadn’t, but as she began badgering me, I really couldn’t look her in the eye, which caused her to spend the rest of the day monitoring me with (from what I could see out of the corner of my eye) an extremely suspicious look on her face.
My favorite part of that story is that she asked me, “Did you do something wrong?” Which is totally what I ask the dog when I think she’s peed on the carpet.
