Exception to the Rule

Ok, so generally when you tell someone, "yeah, I'm from <Insert Place Here>", and they respond with "Oh? Do you know <Insert Person Here>" the proper response is to roll your eyes and make some horribly sarcastic remark. Or something to that effect. Well, generally, anyway. There are a few exceptions.

I recently managed to hit on one of the exceptions.

There are really two exceptions to the incredible sarcasm rule. The first exception: if you don't want to make this person mad, if you'd like to continue to converse in the future, it might not be the best choice. (There are, again, exceptions to this, but we'll ignore them.) If it's someone worth talking to, it might be best to try to change the topic. Otherwise, they may keep asking, "well, what about Bob, then?"

The second exception: if you do actually know the person. These two exceptions of course can be overruled, if you know the person and still want to make the person mad, or if you don't know the person but want to continue to converse. Or if you're momentarily possessed and can't be held accountable for your own actions. That'd overrule pretty much anything you wanted to do, I'm sure.

Now, if it's someone that you don't know, and if it's someone that you only had like a one-in-a-bazillion chance of knowing in the first place, the second exception obviously hasn't been met. The former likely wouldn't either, people that have some concept of probabilities are generally much more worth talking to. Otherwise, it's going to take a year as you go through all the people ever known, trying to find someone that the two of you know in common. It'd be so much easier in that case to just use Orkut.

But as I said, I found one of the first exceptions. I actually knew the guy. But as that'd only happened once before, I had no clue what to do. I figure it's probably best to just mumble something seemingly coherent and back off slowly, don't give your conversational partner the chance to know who to talk to to dig up dirt on you.

Of course, I'm sure there're exceptions to this rule.