No more awkward waving

By Brittany Benjamin

It's like a dream come true. The person who you only slightly know and who you secretly have a crush on, waves at you from across campus.

Feeling like the geeky school kid that you are, you eagerly wave back at him or her with a big goofy smile on your face. You might as well be pushing up your glasses and slobbering with a mouth full of braces.

Then it happens. You suddenly realize that the person is still waving and, more importantly, is not waving at you. You turn around awkwardly, trying not to draw any more attention to yourself than you already have, and find the person who the wave was truly meant for.

Bummer.

It's happened to all of us. Yet, no matter how many times it occurs, it still feels just as embarrassing as the first time.

That's why I've developed this handy guide to campus-wide salutations. The guide takes into account the simple laws of friendship -- in other words it considers if the person is a best friend, an acquaintance or a person you kind of remember maybe meeting at a party one night.

Rule number one: The Bestie. This one may seem like second nature. For girls it's always the same. You see your best friend across campus and obnoxiously yell their name, causing every other person in the vicinity to turn around. Then you run up and give a nice warm hug.

For guys, it's far less ostentatious. Best guy friends either exchange a guy hug -- the half hug and half back smack -- or they do the fist bump.

Rule number two: The Acquaintance. We all have those people in our lives that aren't exactly our best friends in the world, but are also still the people who we don't mind knowing that we played the oboe back in elementary school. For these people, I reserve the actual wave. It's nothing extravagant, just a quick flick of the wrist from right to left and that's it. For guys, it equates to a fist bump.

Rule number three: The Unknown. There are also those people that we see across campus and have a quiet dilemma with ourselves. Do I say hi? Wave? Stare past them like they don't exist? These are the people you don't know very well -- maybe you had a class with them. You probably don't even know their last name. The tricky part is that you're not sure if they're going to say hi back to you, even if you try. What to do?

For this situation, I choose the smile. You can smile towards the person and if they acknowledge you, say a brief hello or just give a cool head nod. If they don't acknowledge you, you just look like an all-around happy person. No embarrassment attached. For guys, it's just another fist bump.