By Jim Hagarty
1991
I’m as friendly as the next guy, I guess. I say “hi” to total strangers on the street, I hold doors open for men, women and kids and I nod and smile appropriately when the situation calls for it. I’ll even shake hands all around if shaking hands seems to be the thing to do.
But I’m afraid I’ve had just about enough of this hugging thing that’s sweeping the nation. Women hugging women, men hugging men, men hugging women, women hugging men. People that are strangers one day, are molesting each other in public the next.
These are not just casual hugs I’m talking about, you understand, where an arm is thrown around a neck, a shoulder is pulled to a shoulder and a cheek brushes an ear. The latest thing is the full-body embrace where the huggers stand toe to toe, shin to shin and other parts to other parts and squeeze together closer than plaster to a wall. And the modern hug is not something that can be accomplished in a hurry like the handshake of old but instead, it’s a long drawn-out phenomenon. In the old days (as in good, old), the strength of a person’s grip during a handshake indicated how much that hand shaker liked you, resulting in well-liked people receiving many hand injuries. Now, the length and tightness of a hug is a sign of how much affection the hugger feels towards the huggee.
Therefore, I submit, today’s hug is not meant to spread cheer or love, but it is offered instead as proof (to the world) of how deeply loving is the hugger and is therefore, primarily, a selfish act. It also serves to make non-huggers feel awkward, isolated and even guilty for being so aloof.
In any case, it’s an insidious practice and these days, I find myself forced to be in a state of constant vigilance, lest huggers sneak out from behind doors and walls and leap upon me with a body lock. I’ve suffered enough of these hugs in the past few years to know I’d live in total peace if I was lucky enough never to get another one. But, alas, I know there are more to come.
The war cry I hear in groups of people these days goes like this:
“Hi! I’m a hugger!” says Person A as he approaches Person B. Before Person B can respond to that information, Person A has his limbs tightly locked around Person B who couldn’t escape if his last name was Houdini. So, the fact that a person is a “hugger” has apparently bestowed on him the right to grab people at will and throw them into physical positions not unlike that attained by professional wrestlers in the ring. Like smokers who take it for granted everybody’s eager to breathe in what they’ve just breathed out, huggers believe they’ve earned the right, being so full of love and all, to embrace other human beings whenever the urge overtakes them.
Personally, if you haven’t gathered by now, I object. Serious physical contact, I believe, beyond the traditional handshake, should be saved for people whose long association with each other along with the obvious bonds of affection between them, have earned them the right to press body to body. I refer, I guess, to family members, husbands-wives, very close friends, that sort of thing.
This all came to mind for me the other night when I was at a gathering where huggers abounded. They were grabbing each other like teenagers at a drive-in theatre. I feared for my safety and fled to a corner to stay free of the flailing arms, necks and legs.
Towards the end of the meeting, I happened to remark to a friend: “Well, at least I managed to make it through this without getting hugged.” In retrospect, I wish I’d said that to someone other than this friend. As I went to leave the room, he and a buddy jumped me, and against my struggling, we were soon locked together closer than three bear cubs on the first day of winter.
In a future column, I shall discuss another blight on modern-day society – the indiscriminate holding of hands.
Hang on, Association of North American Hermits. My membership fee’s in the mail.
