Social norms, as best I can remember in my college studies, are unspoken rules that determine how we act in the good graces of everyone around us.  They’re the guidelines that separate the socially acceptable from that one guy in everyone’s town that aimlessly wanders around carrying a jar of grape jelly, whom he has named Ted and dances happily when motorists honk at him to pull his pants up and get out of traffic.  If you don’t have anyone in your town like that I apologize – they make life so much more interesting.
Sometimes social norms are very black and white and easy to understand.  An examples of this would be don’t laugh hysterically at the heartfelt and more serious portions of a person’s eulogy and then stare violently at the preacher during the amusing asides.
And sometimes social norms can be a little on the grey side.
Today I had a very strange experience with the grey area of a social norm.
My wife and I were at Target with our two year old boy at the check out line when a very nice gentleman who was ahead of us checking out caught notice of Jack and gave him a smile.
This is not totally out of the ordinary as with most small children who draw attention to themselves by loudly greeting every single person or in our case stuffed animal in their sight.  And in most cases the greeted party will return a smile or a “Hello,” or sometimes even go as far to attempt a Q&A.  You know the usual “What’s your name?” or “How old are you?” are always favorties that sometimes I forget are being asked of the two year old and instead answer myself.  The looks I get for that are priceless. 
Regardless everything was going fine and normal until the gentleman in front of us suddenly dropped his smile and began to MEOW loudly and agrily at Jack.  Obviously I knew the gentelman was just playing around and I graciously but cautiously handed out mercy laugh for a brief second or two.  Strangely a second or two became three or four and then five or six and then I found myself continuing an historically long mercy laugh as this very different individual continued to MEOW at our two year old. 
Just to make sure I wasn’t the only one still lauging at this man’s break with sanity I turned to gauge the reaction of my wife and our son.  The look of horror and bewilderment that was displayed on their faces was priceless.  My wife looked as if at the outset was smiling but then as the seconds ticked on couldn’t hold it together any longer and the grin had become a pained grimmace.  Our son was not only not amused at all, but to my pride held one of the most expressive eyebrow raises I’ve ever seen.
Usually in moments of sustained awkwardness the cashier should carry some of the water to break the ice, however our cashier was either enjoying the front row seat to a person losing their mind or was too terrified himself to do anything about it. 
That’s when my wife stepped in and by stepped in I mean gave me the look indicating that I should step in.  I really didn’t know what I was supposed to do.  My instincts have always been to abide by social norms and in this case the social norm would be to smile politley at the gentleman and throw in the mercy laugh.  But I’d already done that.  It was almost as if this guy was simply seeing how long he could keep up the consistent meowing at a two year old just to see our reaction.  In his mental breakdown he was in a sense asking “Would you please ride the crazy train with me?”
Finally, I guess after having his fill of the slow train wreck the cashier louldy wished the man a pleasant day and gave him his receipt moving him along. 
It was odd to me because the man never broke character.  He never smiled or winked or made any gesture whatsoever to us that he was within his right mind.  And according to the unwritten rules of society this is acknowledgement of sanity is a given.  So was the guy crazy or is this the direction that social norms are going?  Are people going to push the boundaries more just to get their kicks out of unsuspecting and innocent bystanders?  I guess only with first hand experience we’ll know for sure.
Oh and on a side note – apparently this guy was meowing at the cashier long before we even stepped up so he was totally bats#%t crazy.