People,

So I'm on the elevator this morning. I had just gotten on and was shortly joined by your typical college "I'm unique" guy. You know, the guy with the long red and purple hair who always wears the army jacket and loves Nine Inch Nails and being a dick. Usually he's really nice and sensitive once you get to know him, but is going through a tough phase in his transition from "guy everyone picked on in high school" to his eventually destination of "respected millionaire software programmer."

Anyway, I was tired and not in the mood for uniqueness. All I wanted was some good old conformity. But nooooooooo.

I think he pegged me as really square and decided he would try to mess with me, or at least annoy the hell out of me. As soon as the elevator starts moving he starts jumping up and down and leering menacingly at me like an idiot. I don't know if he thought I would be scared by this, but I've always been pretty sure the tensile strength of elevator cable can support one or more morons so I was pretty unmoved.

Here's where the great victory for the forces of good come in. After about five seconds I looked him straight in the eye and just said "Dude" in a completely flat affect.

He stopped jumping.

But he not only stopped jumping, in that momentary flash of eye contact a whole world of him understanding that I once was him and that I understood him, his anger, frustration and sadness pretty well was transmitted.

It was weird. When he got off he told me to have a nice day. I told him to have one too.