Shaking hands

Another thing we believe in without seeing, besides wind and God, is germs.  We don’t have any trouble in believing in these nasty little critters, since, without permission, they are capable of entering our bodies through various orifices, push a couple of our internal buttons, and make gobs of icky, slimy stuff ooze from and clog these same orifices, causing much mental and physical torture.  Sometimes a little science knowledge is more harmful than helpful, and knowing what I know about germs is making me a twitchy, paranoid, frightened little coward.

I read somewhere that when you tinkle in the potty, the force of the pee stream is enough to cause millions of droplets to splatter upwards, like Mary Poppins without umbrella, onto and into anything above them in that particular airstream.  If you’re a guy, this is your hands and nose!  This concerns me!

I hate to rat on guy-dom again; but if there’s one thing that bothers me, it is guys who don’t wash their hands after going potty!  And when you shake hands with someone, you can’t see if his hand is acting as a carrier for dissolved pee droplets.  I look warily at the hand of someone offering his hand, always wondering if he’s been giving a pee droplet a ride. 

Sometimes I’m so distracted by this, I get caught by a ‘hard-shaker’ or a ‘finger-shaker.’  A hard-shaker is someone who tries to wrench your arm out of your socket.  Obviously, he has some devious use for your arm, and knows if he yanks and shakes hard enough, he might just pop it off.  The finger-shaker always squeezes before you reach the actual handclasp position, ending up with four of your fingers being ground together in his hand. 

What has happened as a result of this, is the evolution of defensive shaking techniques, such as the ‘thrust shake,’ where you stab your hand forward to be sure they can’t catch your fingers.  Another good defensive shake technique, is the ‘weak handshake,’ where a macho guy is fooled into thinking he is shaking a feminine-type guy’s hand; whereupon, he hastily drops the proffered hand.

The real crowd-pleasing defense is the ‘clammy wet handshake,’ which usually provokes a mongoose type counter-defensive yank from the aggressive hand-shaker.  It’s harder to inspire a good ‘clammy wet handshake,’ and you usually have to visualize something frightening, like a PMS-enraged telemarketer getting into your house, or a sex-crazed crab quivering with passion as he approaches you with mating on his mind.

copyright Norman Cowie