tribe choices

It's something we like to say a lot.

What'd you do last night?

Studied chemistry.

Oh, that's a tribe choice. I went to wawa and watched a Star Wars marathon.

I brought sunblock!

Look who's making a tribe choice.

Yeah, that's cool I guess. We all slip into saying it sometimes. But I just started thinking about what it means. It's really not about a tribe at all. Yes, it's sort of making fun of the school for saying that we should make good decisions (aka tribe choices), but what the phrase tends to be applied to situations where the individual makes a difficult choice, something that the rest of the tribe isn't doing. Most of the good decisions we make that are worth noting (as in, not just rolling out of bed and brushing our teeth) are ones that most people don't make. The tribe choice isn't popular, gets noted with a passing comment, and then is forgotten by everyone who didn't make it. So while everyone makes these choices once in a while (making them tribe appropriate...think along the lines of twamps, which we all are sometimes even though we aren't all total nerds all of the time), it's in going against the group that we make good decisions and get called out on them. Huh.