No one likes a braggart. But check this out: I have an awesome talent. I don’t flaunt it like a peacock’s tail; it is more of a low-profile aptitude. When I deploy the talent correctly, nobody sees it happen. I derive great pleasure using the talent, but, when caught, I profess profound guilt at having unleashed it.

Sometimes — at Farm-Way, the Lebanon Opera House or Crossroads Country Cafe — I just don’t feel like making chit-chat with people I know. So I use my skills to eschew eye contact, sidestep small talk, and deliberately dodge the denizens of the Upper Valley.

Go ahead, give me your best sanctimony: An insult to the very definition of community! If the 45th president of the United States saw you doing this, he would use language normally reserved for North Korea: “You are behaving very badly.”

All done?

Good.

Here’s the thing, fellow dwellers of small communities, I wager dollars to doughnuts you have the same talent. To discover if my assumption is correct, answer this question:

Have you ever seen someone you know — your dentist, your child’s basketball coach, a dear but long-winded friend — in a public place and chosen to turn away before they see you, thereby avoiding any interaction?

If you answered yes, you have the same talent I do. If you answered no, you are lying. Seek counseling.

There is no shame in this grown-up hide-and-seek. Everyone does it, especially in small towns, where we face, shall we say, more opportunities to hone this skill than our city slicker friends.

To illustrate, consider if these scenarios feel familiar.

You’re at the grocery store. A father of one of your high school friends comes breezing through the entrance. He is a great guy, but your paths haven’t crossed in more than a decade.

Mentally, you have the conversation.

“Oh, hey (do I still need to call you Mr. Smith or can it be first name now that I am an adult?), good to see you. Ten years in Boston, had two kids, both boys, quit jobs, sold house, moved to France without employment, stayed there for a couple of years, moved back to my hometown, coaching some hockey, working plenty — surely you read the Valley News? — great to be so close to my wife’s in-laws. You?”

Mentally, you are exhausted.

So you veer into the dog food aisle, turning your back on the innocent offender, and get intimate with the ingredient list on the bag of Puppy Chow. Do you have a dog? Of course not. But you are not having that conversation with leeks, toilet paper, and some pork chops in your cart.

Have you ever walked into a coffee shop and spotted a friend to whom you owe an RSVP for a child’s birthday party? She doesn’t see you. The birthday party is a lifetime away (72 hours), but the friend is probably “planning.” You haven’t sat down with your spouse to look at the calendar, so you genuinely don’t know if your child will attend. You pull your hat low, you bury your face in your phone, you hunch your shoulders, and you walk out without ordering. The friend never sees you. The dodging judges give you a perfect 10 and, a few days later, your child is at the party.

Friends, this behavior is normal, even banal. It gave birth to some great sayings: What you don’t know won’t hurt you; No harm, no foul; Ignorance is bliss; She was none the wiser. Contrary to the bruised feelings you imagine people having when you dodge them, I argue that your avoidance is actually a sign of deep respect for the person you are dodging. By avoiding them when you cannot muster your good self, you save them from an awkward encounter, and preserve the good parts of your relationship.

One underlooked advantage of living among intelligent people — pat on the back, people; a superabundance of you reside in the Upper Valley — is highly refined social radar. Nature is at her zenith during what scientists call a Spontaneous Consensual Double Dodge. The SCDD is simultaneously benign and complex, requiring mental, physical and emotional dexterity. It happens when you spot friends having a romantic dinner, when you spy your child’s teacher at the hardware store, or a former colleague at the farmers market. (Advanced connoisseurs of social interactions can recognize strangers engaging in a SCDD, an exciting spectacle.)

Without any tacit acknowledgment of each other’s existence, you size each other up, accounting for the situation, obviousness of each other’s presence, number of exits and witnesses, and the potential fallout from what some might call a snubbing. Suddenly, with both of you knowing exactly what is happening, you turn away from each other, migrating to safer ground. In some ways this is the highest form of respect because you acknowledge that each of you can take the silence for what it is: now is simply not a good time. No offense. None taken.

The beauty of this talent is that it is essentially harmless. After all, for 99 percent of our time in this part of the world, our encounters with each other are the very reason we choose to live here. The random run-ins guide us through the madness of life, reassuring us that, yes, other people take their kids to Five Guys, enjoy an off-color joke now and again, and revel in the serendipitous discovery that chance encounters so beautifully launch. For all our dodging prowess, we here in Vermont and New Hampshire know better than most that the indelible conversations in our lives are the ones we didn’t avoid.

Mark Lilienthal lives in Norwich. He can be reached at mlilient@gmail.com.