This week I hit the streets of Portland to explore, test, and analyze the intricacies of various ‘rules of thumb.’ To begin, I bought a turnip, and tried my hardest to squeeze some blood out of it. I tried to laugh off my failure all the way to the bank, but I ran into trouble when I couldn’t find any trees that grew money, so I had nothing to deposit. Then I realized that these tasks were testing the validities of idioms, not rules of thumb. A rule of thumb is a personal rule that someone follows without thinking. A rule of thumb is a natural, self-imposed rule, like showing up to work, or taking a shower. Setting rules is a good thing, because it’s how you gain credibility and develop a personality. Your rules of thumb affect the way other people view you and treat you. If you haphazardly cheat, steal, or lie, as a rule of thumb, then people begin to expect you to cheat, steal, or lie. The problem most people will encounter with rules of thumb is that people tend to grow up expecting others to share their own rules of thumb, but there are very few universal rules of thumb, if any. For example, it’s a rule of thumb in most houses that I have lived in that if you get up in the morning and the bathroom is occupied, it’s quite all right to hop outside and greet the morning by watering a nearby tree. This is a fairly popular rule of thumb, but it does not apply to all homes. If you are visiting your girlfriend’s parents for the weekend and staying at her parents’ house, then you should wait in line for the bathroom, or at the very least, use a neighbor’s tree that’s out of sight.
A good friend of mine here has a pretty bizarre rule of thumb: She won’t let guys buy her free drinks. The reason is that she feels that if she lets a guy buy her something, then she owes him something in return. So instead of taking free drinks and giving nothing in return, she will only accept a free drink if she intends to make out with the buyer. She governs her free drink policy fairly and justly, it’s her own rule of thumb, and it’s a great rule of thumb, because as a good friend I never have to worry about buying her a drink. This is a mutually beneficial rule of thumb, but it also makes me want to buy drinks for girls that I don’t know, just to see if anyone else has the same rule of thumb…
I have too many rules of thumb to keep track of, but one of my more prominent ones is my rule of thumb for cell phone usage. My brother has always been quick to harp on me for my set of cell phone rules. I don’t ever pick up a ‘foreign number’ on my phone. If you are calling me for the first time, you have to leave a message, so I know whom you are, and then I’ll call you back when I have the proper time and attitude to talk on the phone. But truth be told, I hate talking on phones. I’m a writer; I ‘talk’ best over email; that’s part of why I started writing this column. I wish I could go out with friends and we could pass notes and write, instead of talking. Words spill too quickly for me to keep track of what I’m saying when I talk, and my lack of attention often gets me into trouble.
I hate my cell phone, it’s like a government tracking device that follows me everywhere. Worse than an overly needy dog, my cell phone rings out to me at all hours, and some sick sense of duty makes me feel like I have to pick up the phone when it rings. Recently, I learned that depending on how I don’t pick up my phone, my friends can tell if I am ignoring them or actually away from my phone. This is because I can let the caller go straight to voicemail by hitting the ‘ignore’ button on my phone, but if I don’t hit ignore the caller goes to voicemail after exactly four rings. My friends tell me that they can tell when I hit the ‘ignore’ button, because they will go to voicemail before four rings if I hit ignore. So my friends can actually tell if I missed their call on purpose or not. So maybe it’s my friends that make me paranoid, and not my over-empathy syndrome, or my Mom.
A golden rule of thumb is to look both ways before one crosses the street. But this rule has been lost on most of the pedestrians and bicyclists here in Portland. It’s hard to drive when I know that I’m going to go to prison if I ever hit one of these idiots as they run stop signs, jaywalk, or carelessly launch their bodies into major boulevards while I attempt to obey the rules of the road. Driving in Portland is a lot like playing “Frogger” on the Atari; only you’re battling the aforementioned idiots instead of crocodiles.
It’s important to differentiate between laws, policies, and rules of thumb. It is against the law to murder, it is our policy to invade foreign lands and take back the oil that they stole from us, but it is a rule of thumb to choose whether or not you pick a pimple or leave it alone. I’m not big on most laws, but I hate policies even more. Back in the day, when I was a slave (read: manager) to a semi-corporate restaurant, we had a policy on when to fire people who didn’t show up to work properly – it was fine to call in sick, but it had to be before your shift. It was also okay to be late, so long as you called to let us know, but the policy was that if you ‘no called and no showed’ then you were fired; no questions asked. I think this policy leaves no room for leniency and human error, and if I applied this rule to my life, then I would have to fire all my friends who have failed to call and cancel on hanging out with me because they passed out early from drinking too much. And it would be awful to next look in the mirror and fire myself for doing the same.
It is in the realm of friendship that I find the most nonsensical rules of thumb. I’ve noticed that a lot of my friends that are girls will be constantly ‘breaking up’ with their “girlfriends” over supposed violations of their own rules of thumb. First of all, let me state how confusing it is that girls refer to their heterosexual, platonic friends that are girls as girlfriends – especially here in Portland, where genders tend to mix together like a Pollack painting. I don’t call my dude friends boy friends; I call a friend a friend, and someone that I am dating is called a girlfriend. My rule of thumb is that I can have as many friends as I want, but only one girlfriend at a time. This is because I have enough trouble dealing with one relationship at a time, and if I was to attempt two at once, I’d probably die from exhaustion and anxiety – relationships have too many rules of thumb!
But often, my friends-that-are-girls will revoke one another’s “friendship cards” because of a violation of a rule of thumb. This seems odd to me, that in “girl-friendship land,” one must not only apply for a membership, but then they are expected to keep up on their terms of agreements in order to stay friends, by keeping a quota on phone calls per week, and by meeting up to hang out as often as stated in the initial contract. All this seems more complicated then a gym membership or a cell phone contract, and there isn’t even any money involved. With dudes, we call when we feel like it, and we come and go as we please: it’s our rule of thumb, and I’m proud of my sex for keeping true to this rule!
One of my rules of thumb was adopted to help curb my insomnia: I’ve learned to sleep with a fan on, regardless of the weather – the constant noise helps me to fall asleep, and those stupid noisemakers that they sell at the sharper image just don’t cut it. But this rule of thumb has caused problems between past girlfriends and myself when they complained about how cold it got in the winter, or that sleeping with a fan on causes a sore throat. The sore throat theory is just that, a theory at best, and if it’s cold, use an extra blanket.
Here is a rule of thumb that I wish everyone would follow: Don’t quote Sigmund Freud or Carl Jung unless you have a degree in psychology. I think it’s cliché to do so, and moreover, most people horribly misquote these two men. Reading an in-flight magazine article on a Jungian theory does not make you an expert on dream theory or my mind. Other rules of thumb: Don’t drink tequila after a night of beer and whisky shots. Don’t bring poison oak to foreign continents, they probably have never heard of it, let alone know how to treat it. Don’t wear turtleneck sweaters, they make you look like an actor taking a head shot, and if you’re an actor taking a head shot, maybe it’s time to stop trying to look like every other stupid actor. And last but not least: Don’t talk on your cell phone, sip coffee, smoke a cigarette, and try to drive a manual transmission all at once while in Chicago 8am rush hour traffic; I almost wrecked a new car doing it last summer!
Saying bless you when someone sneezes is a social rule of thumb that I truly hate. The whole process of repeatedly blessing someone every time they sneeze is more ridiculous than Sunday Mass. You sneeze, so someone says “bless you,” but then you have to say “thank you,” but it’s hard to speak because you have to sneeze again, and you get that awful tickle in your nose as you try to speak, then mid sentence, you sneeze again, with your mouth open because you are trying to say thank you, and you thus contaminate the local air, and then someone has to say “bless you again,” because it’s a social rule of thumb. Imagine if we did the same thing every time someone used the bathroom: they’re both bodily regulatory functions, why does sneezing deserve a blessing? I guess I’m truly blessed, because I sneeze whenever I see the sun, so people constantly bless me. A good friend replies to bless you with f*** you, and I appreciate the ingenuity of his exit strategy from this rule of thumb, because very few people bother to bless him anymore.
In a pole of my twenty-something sarcastic generation friends here in Portland, I found three rules of thumb that were unanimously adopted across all party lines: 1. Don’t have unprotected sex with strangers, 2. Don’t drive drunk (These first two rules are what separate us from those darling baby boomer parents of ours), and 3. Don’t shop at Wal-Mart. Much like a snake can differentiate its prey via their sense of heat, I guess my generation actually senses various hues of hypocrisy, and can thereby judge corporations. But not me! When I’m broke, I shop at Wal-Mart, and this is because my bottom line rule of thumb is that I survive along the path of least resistance, using the smallest amount of effort that I can. This is why I work in the service industry, live in houses that make me envious of homeless peoples’ cardboard boxes, and I dress like a hobo (STBY #4, #10). If Wal-Mart can supply me with comfortable clothes at a cheap cost, then I need to shop there, so that I have more money to spend at bars. According to my generations’ almost unanimous rule of thumb, this makes me a selfish schmuck – but as a rule of thumb, I try my best to avoid labeling and judging myself, because much like a fan, this rule of thumb helps me fall asleep at night, and that’s what matters most to me.