My suitemate rarely goes out on the weekends. She is perhaps the most efficient and no-nonsense person I know. So when she came back around 3 in the morning one Saturday, I and the rest of my suitemates were naturally curious as to where she had been and what had happened that had kept her out so late. When we asked her how her night had been, she just turned to us, said “Oh nothing” and then turned away and smirked.
Now we all knew she is a very independent and private person, yet we were all in shock. If she had just told us “Oh nothing” and left it at that, we probably would have all been cool with her. However, that smirk just about set us over the edge. The way she used laughter conveyed to us, not exactly superiority, but something along that line. In just a single smirk, she was able to convey to us that she had an amazing night while that we were not privileged to hear about. It almost seemed as though she was looking down on us. In her mind, there was no way our nights could have exceeded hers and was able to communicate this very effectively.
What is even more interesting is that it would not have been socially acceptable for her to say all these thoughts out loud to us. However, was her smirk really any different? It still told us all she was thinking whether she meant it to or not. Her small laugh, may have been pleasurable to her, but it was not well received by others. Instead, it created animosity in the room and raised the tension to a level that mere words could not have managed.
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