Why I Do Not Hug Strangers, Ugh

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A stranger is introduced, how do you do, they ask then open their arms to wrap you in a bear hug. 

Ugh.  

I'm old enough to remember how The Hug became part of our culture.  Up to the nineteen-fifties, people did not wrap themselves around each other as soon as they met, or even after several encounters. 

You used to get to know someone before you exchanged body fluids.  Yes, when someone wraps their big sweaty bare arms around me, I end up with their dampness and dander on me, on my clothes, the gases they emit enter my nose.

Before the touchy-feely self-realization movements of the seventies, people in America did not hug each other unless there was genuine intimacy.  '

So I stand stalwart and when another one approaches me with hairy armpits about to be six inches from my face, I say, "I don't do the hugging thing."

A lot of people think I'm cold, or something worse, because I don't do the hugging thing. 

Oh well

There are a lot of residual elements from the seventies in our culture, most of them are wonderful.  We have gay marriage today because back then we began embracing people for who they are, the environmental movement started with the hippies going back to nature.  In the seventies, we truly did expand man's consciousness.

But we also had a whole population of zombies wandering the state hugging everyone for a couple decades, and the practice now seems to have rubbed off and spread to everyone.  

Well, I preserve my intimate times for when they mean something. 

- Kay Ebeling
The City of Angels is Everywhere
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