It’s been awhile since I’ve been out and around people socially. Even longer since I’ve been out and met new people or been introduced to someone new for the first time. With his long absence of shaking someones hand or giving some a fist bump or even a high five over the past year because of Covid, I’ve somehow managed to get worse at handshakes. I mean I was never good at the art of handshaking to begin with. It never mattered who I was meeting or where, every time I meant someone for the first time and had to shake their hand, I reached out my hand and let them grab a hold of my hand like it’s a dead fish. I let my hand go numb and let them hold my hand and shake however suffices them. My hands just there.

I don’t squeeze their hand harder to show authority or strength. I actually don’t even squeeze at all. Instead I let their hand grab a hold of mine, squeezing it as tight as they want, and letting them shake it as aggressively or not at all if they want. As terrible as I am at them, I for one love handshakes. I feel like it’s such a respectable thing to do when you meet someone, but I don’t do anything more during a handshake then simply giving someone my hand to hold while I meet them and forget to remember their name.

Nowadays it’s so strict on what we can or can’t do, we hardly ever meet anyone new anymore. It doesn’t help that I wasn’t any good at it before. Recently I’ve found myself panicking more and more each time I find myself meeting someone new. I couldn’t give two shits about this whole pandemic in all honesty, and mask thing, but I know not everyone sees it or is as ignorant about this Covid thing as I am, so I do my best to be considerate when it comes to the new “handshaking” techniques.

I always go in for the politically correct “elbow” now when I meet someone. The new form of shaking hands as they would say. I hate it. I feel like a fish slapping our fins, or like were pretending to be chickens and slap our wings together. More often than not people tend to feel the same way as me and rather not use their elbows to meet someone. That’s where things get weird.

I feel like I get it wrong every single time. I pull back from the elbow just as they do and go to reach out my hand, but when they go for a fist pound, I go for a handshake. Then I switch to go for a pound and then they switch to a handshake. Right off the bat I blew it. I haven’t guessed right since this whole thing has been going on.

It’s like when you walk into someone in the hallways or like at the mall and you go left to go around then and they go right. Then you go right and they go left, until finally you say, “Alright you go this way and I’ll go that way.” Except when it comes to shaking hands and I get it wrong twice I just give up and do it the way family do.

I say fuck it after I’ve tried them after I’ve failed three times to meet this person. I start with the chicken wing, fail, then the handshake while they went for the pound, failed, then when I have a chance to make things right and fix things I mess up by switching to the pound. It’s like a never ending game of rock, paper, scissors. After I’ve strike out I just say fuck it and go in for a hug… an awkward hug at that I must add. I’ve never been6566 any good at meeting people before and now since this thing has started I’ve lost all and any progress I’ve made.

Is there a, “Shaking hands for Dummies” book out there. Lord knows I could use some help.