Confusing Conversation with Kelly

After reading Chapter 4 on The Construction of Self and Society, I realized that there are many aspects of life that we are just "going through the motions" on.  We have developed into a society that expects and predicts the norm to be presented to us in every instance.  Today, I decided to change it up a bit and throw off my sister, Kelly, in our bi-weekly Skype date.

I had laid out a game plan of how I would make the conversation go, in order to go against the social norm as much as I could humanly do; however, I just couldn't stay according to plan.  I started off with asking "Who is this?" when she answered , throwing her off and making her question whether she was being prank called or not. For questions like, "What did you do today?" I gave an EXTREMELY thorough account of my day, everything down to the detail, which ended up being a good five minute explanation in itself.   Eventually, things got into a semi-normal conversation, but I did my best to try to give behavior against what is normal.

Throughout this conversation, I began to realize it was very difficult to come up with unusual responses to what she was asking or telling me.  The conversation started to get spacey, as I was trying to think up responses to throw back at her.  Lucky for me this wasn't an in-person conversation because if that had been the case, I never would've been able to keep my composure and think up strange behavior to give her.

I could definitely tell that my unusual behavior was getting to Kelly.  She was becoming quite confused in some of my responses and frustrated in having to answer normally understood questions with reasons and other things pertaining to what she was asking.  Her expressions told me that I was getting to her; her looks of confusion and hand gestures told me it was time to break character.  After telling her of my assignment, her mind cleared a little bit and thought it was interested in what I had to do.  She was excited when I told her that I pretty much got to screw with people and be a smart ass in a college class for credit!  She told me at first she thought everything was normal, but then she suspected something was up.  She explained how she wasn't sure how to address my behavior so she just went with the flow.

This activity would be something I would enjoy doing in the general public with a group of friends.  Going to a place like the Mall of America and totally going against what we think is "normal" in society would definitely turn a lot of heads and make people question our behavior.  However, there will always be that one person that would complain to security or someone and would get us in trouble.   I would most likely be questioned by security about why I was presenting such behavior. Thinking of this from a sociology standpoint, I could very well say that I was just acting in normal behavior because who actually knows what normal is?  We have an idea what normal is, but that's just it; its only an IDEA.