Imagine the scenario:

You are at a friend’s house visiting for a couple days. During this time, you spend quiet a lot of time with everyone there: your friend’s parents, his/her siblings, and a cousin who also happens to be there for a few days.
So, you are sitting in the family room, chit-chatting with them all. All are laughing and joking around…when out of nowhere, the joking conversation turns into an argument between one of your friend’s siblings and his/her cousin.

How do you react to this? What do you do? What do you think?







Now, you see this argument escalating and becoming a serious issue. The cousin slaps the sibling and the sibling slaps back. Your friend and everyone else is quiet and have no idea what to do. This goes on for a few minutes. You could not figure out a good reason for why such an escalation over such a small matter which was being joked about to begin with. No one else says anything the whole time, but seems really upset and confused at what was going on.

What is your reaction now? Do you try to follow the argument? do you pretend that it is normal and that nothing unusual was happening? Or do you get up and try to help them resolve or try to say something to break the tension?







This continues for a while, after which everyone in the house, except you, burst into laughter, including the sibling and the cousin. You are completely confused. You have no idea how the joke that turned into a fist fight turned back into a joke in a fraction of a moment. You are then told, that the whole thing was an act played to see how you reacted. The cousin didn’t really hit the sibling, and the sibling didn’t really hit back, and the rest of the family members weren’t really upset or confused. It was all an act to get YOU

Now what? Do you laugh with them? Do you laugh at yourself to actually fall for that? How do you feel about the whole thing now?