Story Time from Saskatchewan

I'm at my aunt and uncle's house in Saskatoon right now, but I had to share a story from yesterday.

Background detail 1: There's some cliqueyness going on among the grad students in my department lately. You might say that some of the first years have formed themselves a "cool group." And, if you know me at all, you'll know that there's nothing that bugs me more than a cool group. (It may have something to do with flashbacks to high school. And may have provoked those recent flashbacks.)

On Saturday, our departmental grad students' society tried to have a beginning of semester potluck. Only five grad students were there, plus Chris. Of fifty in our department. It turned out that one of the first years had e-mailed a bunch of the others, saying he was tired of potlucks and didn't want to talk with people he didn't know, and invited them to a pub instead. But only invited those that are liked by the cool group.

Okay. So, I'd heard about the whole counter-event thing from several different people. (My friend Justin refers to those of us who work in the office all the time as the "Sewing Circle," because news travels so quickly through the office.) So had the president of our society, although we kept it from the girl who organised the potluck, because her feelings would be hurt. I decided to have a bit of a chat with the one who invited people away, because I know him and work with him. Our talk was really positive and helpful. We made plans for stuff that the whole group would enjoy doing. We talked about how everyone will be at the conference next weekend, and how it'll be good to have a chance for people to get to know each other. I casually mentioned, in context of "only five people came to the potluck" that I knew about all of them going to the pub. But not in an "I know what you did" way, but more in a casual-mention-like-it-was-general-knowledge way. We both said that it was a good talk.

Background detail 2: I spend all my time working in the PhD office. Our department has a common room, and then there's each an MA office and a PhD office off to the side of the common room. The doors are very thin, and we spend all of our time wandering back and forth through the three rooms. It's understood that, if you're wanting to work there, that you're going to be working with a bunch of others. Oh, and the common room is actually quite a small room, as are our offices.

Flash-forward to yesterday afternoon. I'd been working back and forth between the common room and the PhD office all day. Some MA student friends of mine had shown up and started working in the MA office, and so I moved to my office, but with the door open. A girl (I didn't recognise her voice) came in to the common room and was talking on her cell phone, and so I closed my door. But I could still hear her quite clearly, because the doors are like paper.

Suddenly I heard my name.

"Well, I don't know who told Maryanne, but she was talking with Erik yesterday, and he said that she knows that we went to the pub on Saturday! Who would have told her? Did you tell Maryanne? I didn't tell Maryanne. How would Maryanne have even heard about it?"

Now. What would you do in that situation?

I was kind of frozen. I didn't want to know why it was such a big deal that I knew. (Seriously, more than half the department got that e-mail. And I wasn't one of the organisers of the potluck.) I didn't want to hear any more of this. And I was going to have to leave the office soon, since I had to teach a class. It sounded like this phone conversation wasn't going to end anytime soon.

I don't know what I should have done, but I'll tell you what I did. My inner Kevin McDonald from "The Tax Man" episode of Corner Gas. Kicked in. In fact, what I said was a direct quote. (Which is why I'm pretty sure I only did this for my own amusement.)

I opened the door, and called out (she was seriously five feet away from me), "I'm right here! I can hear you!"

And that's when she took off running.* (It was some girl that I'd only met once before. I was surprised she even knew my name!)

What would you have done, in that situation? Would you have stayed hidden? Casually walked through the room and said "Hi?" Am I entirely twisted that, for the rest of the day, I kept remembering that exchange and bursting out laughing? Especially when remembering how everybody knows that the common room is the worst place to have a private conversation, and the offices are always full of people silently working?




* (She later came back, and did a bunch of back-tracking, and we actually got to know each other a bit. We second years have decided that our response to all of this will be just to be friendly with them, get to know them individually and not treat them like a whole group, and ignore their drama. Set the example by being grown-ups. But I'm adding my own twist by not allowing any kind of talking-behind-backs.)