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How To Break A Norm

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I live with my parents and three sisters and every day during the week we all wait for each other to get home so we can eat dinner together and interact with and one another. Growing up my parents always told us how sacred dinnertime is to a family, because it is a chance to talk to your family members about your day and bond with each other. Dinner in my family is not like any other family because it lasts about an hour. The reason why our dinner takes so long is because after were done eating we still sit at the table talking and drinking coffee. Sometimes we move the conversation to the living room and continue talking while watching television. My family is very close with each other, which makes breaking this norm more amusing and fun …show more content…

What You Did To Break It The norm that I decided to break for this experiment was not socializing at home with my family members. Well for this social experiment I choose to not interact with the family during dinner. Before I began the experiment I practice keeping a straight face with my girlfriend and did not talk to her while we were eating. She gave me suggestions on how to keep a straight face without laughing and sell it. She told me to keep my head down and not make eye contact in order for me to not crack under pressure. After a couple of practice tries I was finally able to keep a straight face and was ready to start the experiment. Instead of talking to my family members during dinner I would stay quiet and once I was done eating I would go to my room and isolate myself from everyone else. Since I would be breaking a norm that my family values the most and it was only …show more content…

My father whose reaction stood out to me the most out of everybody he could not believe what I was doing during the dinner table and insisted for me to tell him what was happening. He believed that there must have been a reason behind it because it was not like me to not interact during the dinner table conversation. At first he asked if my girlfriend and I were fighting and if I wanted to talk about it and that he would be more than glad to offer some advice. After I told him that nothing was wrong he still did not believe me but he stopped asking me for that day. The following day I remember my father asked me again what was wrong because two days of being quite was worse than before. He asked me again what was wrong and I insisted that nothing and continued eating while trying not to make eye contact. He did not ask me again until the very last day on Friday and after dinner was over I finally told him what I was doing. I explained to him that it was for one of my classes that I had to break a norm and I choose to break the dinner table norm. He was mad at first because he said “out of all the norm why choose that one if you know we value our dinner table time more than anything, why couldn’t you take the bus to school or wear pink everyday or something different.” I started to laugh because of what he was saying and how serious he looked and mad on how I could of done my project on

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