I come from a family of non-huggers.
My mom may dispute this, because she's taken up hugging
during the last few years, but seriously, we don't hug. Brothers No. 1, 2, and
3 got/gave hugs when leaving and returning from their LDS missions. Brother No.
4 gave them when he left, and will probably give them when he gets back.
Brother No. 5 has years before he'll have to hug anybody, since he's only 16.
Hugs = Too much touchy-feely! Space bubble! Get awaaaaay
from me!
It's not that I don't know how to hug — I had a boy teach me
when I was in 10th grade, and he was a very good teacher. I'm quite
a good hugger . . . when I feel like it.
But I don't often feel like it.
I've always known that part of my hugging problem stems from
the fact that I have a giant space bubble. I spent most of a 15-minute meeting
at work last Friday feeling uncomfortable because I was standing two feet away
from a girl when I could have been standing six feet away.
(The space was there; I chose my floor location without
thinking the situation through.)
In high school, I took to being anti-hug because it was
funny. My friends got a kick out of torturing me, and I got a kick out of
playing up my reactions.
But back in February, when one of my roommates was about to
move to San Francisco, I realized that I now use hugs as a sort of weapon with which I purposely try to make people uncomfortable. I like to watch people squirm as they wrestle with the impulse to hug while also fighting against the waves of awkward I'm sending in their direction.
Why am I so vindictive?
I don't know, but it's sure funny.
The day my roommate was due to move away, I was sitting in
my room building a bookcase when she poked her head in the door. She was trying
to find the source of the hammering noise in the house; I was trying to avoid
her and the good-bye hug that I knew was coming.
Me: Are you all packed?
Roommate: Yep.
Me: So . . . guess this is good-bye.
My brain: HAHA! I'm sitting in the middle of a bookshelf and
you can't even open the door all the way because my room is full of wooden
shelves! This is brilliant!
Roommate: Not yet. I'm not going to leave until early
tomorrow morning, so I'll come back and say good-bye tonight.
My brain: Boo.
I went to class that night thinking that maybe she would be
asleep by the time I got home, and came home to find her running around the
kitchen and talking about how much she still had to do. My plan to avoid the
inevitable hug had been foiled again.
At this point, I had to make a choice:
1. The usual (i.e. say good-bye from a safe distance and
exude enough don't-even-think-about-it vibes that the target is unwilling/unable to break through
the awkward barrier)
2. Instigate
For once, I took pity on the victim.
I instigated.
It won't happen again.
(Incidentally, sorry Layton, for using the hug awkwardness
vibes against you when you left for your new job. I still feel bad about that .
. . minus the fact that I was mentally laughing the whole time . . .)
If I ever say, "Okay, give me a hug," just know that I'm choosing pity.
In case you are a current hugger and have suddenly decided to reform and become a non-hugger, here's a final word of advice from an expert: I've learned that when trying to avoid a hug,
it's best not to make sudden movements — or movements of any kind,
actually.
This is why:
