After yesterday’s social experiment, in which I walked down the street at 3pm and said “good morning” to people, to see if they would unquestioningly say good morning back, I have been thinking about ways of developing this fascinating social study. Some ppeople would be happy to stick with the tried and tested format which has clearly been a massive success with the audience (I don’t want to brag, but I got 3 Facebook likes for yesterday’s Dollop) but I am not the kind of person who sees that sort of success and then becomes afraid to change and develop things, getting stuck in a rut; I am constantly reinventing myself and evolving. Who knows, the next time I do this new and improved version of the Good Morning game, I might even get four Facebook likes, or, maybe even five! I don’t want to get too carried away, still, I suppose it’s important to aim high and dream big.
“So yesterday’s results indicated that out of everyone who spoke to me in the street, all of them said “good morning” back. Oops, sorry, maybe I should have issued a spoiler alert for those people who hadn’t got around to listening yet, perhaps saving that particular episode for a special occasion; maybe you were planning on having a David’s Daily Digital Dollop party and inviting all your friends to join in the fun with you.
I think that next time I play the game, I should push things even further. The first part will be the same. I will go out onto the street at about 3 in the afternoon, and say good morning to people. Then, when someone says “good morning” back, I will ask them for the time, and then, once the time is given, thank the person and say “good morning” to them again, and see if they still respond with “good morning.” I think this will be both entertaining and a worthwhile social experiment. I would imagine that some people will still say “good morning” the second time, perhaps just out of politeness or maybe simply as an automatic, unthinking response. Perhaps I could then put my findings from this research to a psychologist and we could discuss them on the Dollop. When I first set up David’s Daily digital Dollop, it was very much with the Reithian philosophy in mind, of entertaining, informing and educating. And I’m sure that if you are a regular Dollop reader/listener then you’ll agree that you’ve all learnt some valuable lessons over the last 4 and a half months, even if what you’ve learnt is simply how much of your life you’ve wasted listening to and reading all these hours worth of Dollops; although I think some of you might have suddenly had that collective realisation yesterday – three Facebook likes indeed.
When I was talking to my housemate Ben about yesterday’s social experiment, he reminded me of something that happened when we were both at university together. We were on a walk, and there were lots of cyclists on our route. Every time a cyclist drew level with me, I would wait about a quarter of a second until they were just passing me, and then shout, “excuse me, do you have the time?” Most of the cyclists would look round, surprised. Some would give an apologetic shrug, and others would scowl at me. But quite a few of them actually tried to glance at their watches and shout back. Looking back now, I suppose it was a bit of a reckless thing to do, given that it could have caused a cyclist to have an accident, as they had to look back over their shoulder and then glance at their watch before shouting the time back at us. This is why I was surprised by the amount of cyclists who actually managed to do this.
Ben was trying not to let his amusement show, and kept hiding his face, brimming with tears of laughter at the sight of the suddenly startled cyclists. But then, one time I did it and a man looked back over his shoulder, completely surprised to hear a voice from behind him, and nearly toppled off his bike. Ben involuntarily burst into loud laughter and fell to the ground and began helplessly rolling around in hysterics. Ben’s reaction caused me to also start laughing really loudly. The cyclist threw his bike down and came running towards us, shouting and swearing, and saying that he was going to kill us. Ben, sensing the danger, tried to get up off the ground, grab me and make a run to safety. But he was laughing too hard to manage the getting-up-and-running part, although he did succeed in grabbing me, which caused me to fall to the ground, and we both promptly began to roll to safety, down the hill and into some bushes.
We both lay there while the psycho cyclist yelled that he would find us and sort us out. Fortunately, the man must have eventually got back on his bike, because the shouting stopped, and we deemed it safe to crawl out of the bushes.
Hopefully the man doesn’t find this Dollop and decide to come after me, because it would be very easy for him to find me, given that my gigs with The Young’uns are advertised very publicly all over the Internet, plus I broadcast what I’m doing every day in this blog. If the man does still feel angry about that episode and wants to get his revenge on me, then it would be simple for him to strike. If he was able to be a little patient and wasn’t in a big hurry to get his revenge, then he could simply wait until I was in his local area and strike then, saving him the need to even travel. I mean, he’s waited for twelve years, so what does another few months matter?
Please, if you care about me at all, then make sure you don’t mention this Dollop to anyone you know who is a cyclist, especially if they were likely to have been cycling around the Scarborough area in 2004. Thank you.
So, providing that I’ve not been killed by a psycho cyclist, (or by anyone else who wanted to kill me and decided that now was the perfect time to do so, given that they’d likely get away with it because all the suspicion would be focused on cyclists in Scarborough) I’ll be back tomorrow.
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