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I'll Have What He's Having
When in Rome. Or New Orleans, for that matter.
Posted October 21, 2009
The scene: New Orleans, the French Quarter. I'm out with college friends to celebrate the wedding weekend of a fellow buddy. It sounds like the set-up for a Vince Vaughn or Seth Rogen movie– with a lead-in like that, I'm sure you can envision any number of intriguing outcomes to the tale.
Alas, you don't know me very well.
Those who do would be quick to assure you that this story is less likely to end in Judd Apatow-inspired, plastic-bead-related debauchery, and more likely to segue into an admittedly overwrought psychological analysis of mundane daily life.
So we're sitting around the table at an ornate, well-known, French-Creole restaurant and the time comes to place our order. Our waiter, clearly a local, reviews our lunch options. Because we're part of a group, we have but two choices available to us. The first is the trout. The second is a menu offering I've never heard of before–something that sounds like FEE-lay.
I gaze around the room to see what my lunch companions are making of all this. Many look as puzzled as I am. Grasping for clues, I desperately hope the waiter starts taking orders at the other side of the table. Otherwise I'm going to be stuck ordering the trout, and I don't even eat fish. That, or I'm going to have to suck it up and ask what the feelay is.
After a few orders of trout, the bride's brother takes the plunge and goes for the feelay. The waiter says something else I have a hard time deciphering, to which my friend's future brother-in-law replies, "medium rare."
A-ha. Feelay sounds like some sort of beef.
A second later, a second revelation: He's saying, "filet," but with a Creole accent.
So around the table we go, the waiter walking counter-clockwise and asking each of my friends, "trout or feelay." Now my anxiety has shifted from wondering what this exotic dish might be to pondering the appropriate way to say it. Do I pronounce the word the way I usually would, asking for a "full-AY," done medium? Or do I follow the old adage about when in Rome and say the word with an accent that in any other circumstance would make me look ridiculous, like June Cleaver speaking fluent jive in the original Airplane! movie?
We're faced with quandaries like this all the time. Stick to your guns or go with the flow? Raise your hand in the large lecture hall and admit that you don't understand the previous example or stay quiet with the rest of your nearly comatose classmates? Sit in your seat and clap politely for the performance that you thought was merely pedestrian, or submit to the ongoing standing ovation so as not to stand out or offend? Remain true to your principled stand on appropriate footwear or give in and join the majority of society that has decided it's OK for adults to wear in broad daylight plastic clogs with swiss cheese holes? The pressure to conform is even powerful enough to prompt us to give responses we know to be incorrect.
To be fair, conformity is a lubricant that keeps society running smoothly. Complicated social movements become easier when we conform; we like other people who act like us. There's something to be said for toeing the line and not ruffling feathers. And in some circumstances, we need the people around us to find out not just the expected way to behave, but also the right answer to important questions. Like, is it safe to cross against the lights at this intersection I've never been to before?
But especially in an individualistic culture like ours, it sometimes seems distasteful, all this going along with the majority, especially when we do it just to fit in. These are competing forces, the pressure to conform and our drive for independence. It's the yin and yang of life in the presence of others. Or the feelay and filet, if you will.
This battle of pronunciation is one that I've wrestled with on other occasions since that wedding weekend. I now live in Boston, where "Worcester" is actually "Woostah," "Billerica" is actually "Billrickah," and Derek Jeter is actually, "Jetah, you suck." The fight to pronounce my "r"s as I was taught to do growing up just isn't worth the effort in most of my interactions with Boston natives.
And so it went in New Orleans. The wave of conformity rushed around the table until it landed on me. Resigned to my fate as just another brick in the wall, I went along with the rest of the group. Head hung, I muttered in a barely audible whisper, "I guess I'll have the feelay."
Ultimately, I took the path of least resistance. I decided to save my anti-conformity bullets for other, more important fights on other days. Like refusing to give in when Microsoft Word tries to tell me I have to spell "advisor" as "adviser." Some causes are just too important to abandon, regardless of how all the Romans are acting.
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Sam Sommers is a social psychologist at Tufts University in Medford, MA. His first book, Situations Matter: Understanding How Context Transforms Your World, will be published by Riverhead Books (Penguin) in December 2011. You can follow him on Facebook here and on Twitter here.
