The Awkward Hugs I’ve Known
by Tempra Board
I’m not the first person to write about hug awkwardness. I just read a Reader’s Digest column by humor writer Mary Roach on the subject, and life coach/self help writer Martha Beck describes a disastrous mis-hug with a client in one of her books. These stories strike a chord with me because I can be socially awkward, often fretting about how to get through social situations (including seemingly innocuous hugs and handshakes) without mistakes, and of course in overthinking it, I usually blow it.
I am not a hugger by nature, but I am happy to hug, generally, when someone else initiates it. And sometimes the hug gets botched—big time. Here is my list of the Top 10 Most Awkward Hugs:
10. The Face Plant: This most often occurs when the two people engaged in the hug are of radically different heights. I’ve slammed my teeth or nose into the shoulders of tall huggers and likewise rammed my shoulder into the face of short huggers too many times to count. Neither of us ever mentions it. I just smile, turn away, and run my tongue over my front teeth to check for looseness.
9. The Sit-Stand: Recently I was finishing up a meeting when a male colleague of mine came in for the hug. He’s a frequent hugger so I wasn’t surprised, but my chair got stuck underneath me and I couldn’t pull it out in time, so I just grabbed him around the waist with one arm, my head on his stomach. “OK, this isn’t weird!” I think one of us said.
8. The Lech-Press: So hugs among acquaintances of the opposite sex often seem weird to me. More so when that acquaintance, is, well, something of a lech. I worked with a man once who seemed to use the causal hug as a means of inappropriate closeness. After a meeting one day he hugged me and then wouldn’t let go. My arms had meanwhile dropped to my sides and I was basically just paralyzed in his 10-second grip. Ten seconds may not seem like much, but in casual hug years, it’s an eternity. You should not hug anyone for more than five seconds unless you are sleeping with that person or it’s a family member in the military who is being sent overseas.
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