People Watching.

First things first, if you have never people watched then I suggest you google
"how to people watch" and then do it and then come back. 

For one of our assignments in class this week we were asked to "practice your observation skill" which in layman's terms means to people watch. Specifically we were asked to observe how families interact with each other and try to understand what unspoken rules there were when they acted with each other.

It was a familiar and interesting assignment.

It was familiar because it takes me back to all the times I would go out to eat with my dad. If we sat down in a booth or table he would always pick the seat where he would be able to see a majority of the people in the restaurant. In doing that, he would watch people and how they interacted with each other. It was interesting and fascinating to him. Something that I realized down the road was that, while he was studying other people, I was studying him. Every now and then I would watch with him but the majority of the time I was focused on what he was doing. I could tell when he was focused, because he would stop touching his food (and if you know my dad then you know he eats everything in 10 minutes or less). I could tell when he was confused by what he saw, because he would squint his eyes and do a little shake with this head. These,along with other quirks of his, let me know the optimal time to have conversations with him. Something else I thought of while doing this assignment was, do other people do this? If they did, what did they see when they looked at us? What was our unspoken rule? You see people in their families go out of their way to receive attention. Why? I guess that's the big question. 

Along with unspoken rules, one that I found in my own home was that typically whenever a friend was over and I needed something from my parent's room, the friend wasn't supposed to go in, only I was. It was never said that they couldn't go in but it was for the most part learned from my parents. For example, if my mom had a friend over and she needed something from her room, she would say something along the lines of "stay here, I need to grab something, I'll be right back" I don't remember a time when any of her friends went back there. Did anyone else have that?  

I know this was short but I hope you enjoyed! I would love to know if you are a people watcher or if you have any interesting family rules!