Social Conventions

• adolescent and adult males opening doors for all females except infants, for whom everyone opens doors
• adolescent and adult males issuing loud public whistles and invitations to sexual contact to females unknown to them
• suitors and their families offering future brides a "bride price" to win their hands in marriage and undergoing embarassing rituals at their doors before being accepted.
• brides and their families offering suitors a "dowry" to win their hands in marriage and undergoing embarassing rituals at the wedding before being accepted.
• family members removing the skulls of deceased kin, plastering and painting them, and circulating them among friends
• family members eating large baked fowl or pigs
• saying a prayer to the deity before eating
• belching loudly after eating
• attempting to make one's sibling laugh while he/she is drinking milk
• signing one's name at the conclusions of personal letters
• using cut-up headlines to assemble, character by character, the text of a kidnapper's ransom note
• using "u" for "you" and "cul8r" for "see you later" when texting
• using "thou" and "thee" and "thine" to refer to lovers, children, servants, and equals one wishes to insult
• using French instead of one's native Russian for polite conversation
• using PowerPoint presentations to "bulletize" your discourse's main points
• shifting one's fork to the left hand in order to cut food, and returning it to one's right hand in order to eat the food one has cut
• using only one's right hand when eating food without utensils
• wearing white clothing after Memorial Day and until Labor Day, but otherwise never
• wearing white clothing to indicate one is in mourning for one's dead kin