For all of you that do a significant amount of walking through crowds of people that may or may not know you, you run into the head nod dilemma. The assortment of these acknowledgments truly defines the relationship between the two people. The types are as follows:
The Upward Head Nod - This head nod is used for friends that you normally hang out with, but this time you simply don't want to stop for small talk. It gives the implied "what's up?", but of course you're aren't really interested in their answer to that question.
The Downward Head Nod - The downward head nod is mostly used for common acquaintances. This signifies that you simply have been introduced and both agree to the fact that you won't actually ever hang out. This head nod is essentially something to buy you time until you are out of sight. The downward nod can also be a sign of simply paying your respects to an elder or just being friendly to a complete stranger.
The Smile and Half-Wave - This is quite possibly one of the worst because it implies that you used to be friends and hang-out, until you realized how much of a weirdo this person is. Of course you didn't simply cut the relationship there. You'd rather awkwardly wave to this person, and claim that "we should hang out," for the rest of your life.
The Fast-Small-Talk - Oh this one could be particularly obnoxious. Some people just find the need to stop and chat every time you see them. The problem occurs when you see them so often as to not have anything new to 'report' so that you run into an awkward exchange of small talk. It usually goes, "how are you?" "good how are you?" and so on and so forth. This 45 second conversation usually abruptly ends in "well, cya."
