REQUIEM FOR THE HAND-SHAKE…
I’ve been in sales –of solar products, custom additions, new construction, & mostly, Real Estate– for over 35 years as I write this, and shaking hands– at the end of each appointment, each meeting, each agreement, each contract, each personal contact, each attempted deal, and of course Every Real Deal– was never in question. It had become so automatic that my right hand just propelled itself toward the client or potential customer as if to trigger and compel the mutual shake. Up until just recently, this was never a problem.
It was an automatic part of the process of doing business for me, from Day One. My first hard-core Sales Manager used to demonstrate: You look a man or woman (or both, respectively) in the eyes at the end of your meeting or encounter or session and prepare to say goodbye with a sincere smile and a firm, meaningful grip…as a matter of course, you shake their right hand, and they shake yours. This is how it has always been,
Until now.
I realize now, in considering this landmark shift and belweather change, the hand-shake habit goes way back…
Because, long before I was in the business world, I was a gregarious and fanatic baller, as they now say… playing hoop nonstop in high school or summer leagues or pick-up games all over the place on outdoor courts, with friends or strangers, it didn’t matter, you shook hands as a sign of respect.. and it was subtly understood as combative acknowledgement when each mock battle was concluded, it wuz just what you do, and did…. Sometimes it would just be a casual slap of the hands, other times a more intense soul shake, with the lean-in, shoulder-bump optional.
It was part of the social ritual of the game itself.
This carried over to my later days of coaching rec league hoop & Jr NBA games locally during the seasons when my son was playing most fervently, then assistant coaching at the CYO level, and then becoming a rabid parent watching AAU and later varsity games…all the way up and down the line, players, coaches, relatives, supporters, fans, all shook hands after each contest—it represented a communal love of the game.
When I started attending musical events like rock concerts in the post-hippie era, and then professional jazz performances in downtown Albany as soon as I was old enough to drink, I came to realize that soul shakes were part of both forms of musical culture—and if you were cool enough to visibly appreciate their music, those playing it were always amenable to shaking hands when the set, or the evening, was over… again, part of the community between performer and listener.
But it is sad to announce, amid all the other disruption and fear and dire health consequences delivered to us in The Year of the CoVid 19-Virus… It is making me—and everyone else– change a lifelong habit…taking away– perhaps permanently?– one of the simplest, unspoken, and natural bonds of humanity… or at least the American version thereof.
Not only do I have to avoid this natural impulse in business, as it turns out, but felt shunned by two very different friends this past weekend when running into them separately in the same trip to the local health food store. One pulled back and put her hands up as if to fend me off, then apologizing that she was all congested after a plane trip back from down south, and didn’t want me to catch what she had. OK, understood, but I wasn’t afraid of that I wanted to say.
Other dude, life long friend since college days, a stalwart musician, married ow late in life, with me being the only local witness to the ceremony at city hall a few years back…hadn’t seen him in maybe 8 months, went to shake, then saw too late that he was going for the knuckle-bump alternative, then went I complied, he even backed away from that. I was baffled. Did he regard me as contaminated, or was he not feeling well either? It had already become an imbedded, reflexive mechanism… NOT to allow hand contact of any time, and all this has just changed, as far as I can tell… in the past month!
My constantly-digressing mind took me back to something I’d read long ago, late Elementary School years maybe, when I was nuts about the Robin Hood legends and tales of yore in England… when travelers would approach each other on a path, they would reveal their “fighting hand” to show they were NOT carrying a weapon as they approached the other person. Shaking hands confirmed that you were keeping the peace, and would not draw weapons.
But now our bare hands are regarded as weapons in this new age of viral warfare… and years after his death, it now appears Howard Hughes—perhaps the world’s most famous germo-phobe in recent history.. was right. The world is apparently full of microbial warriors, coming at us from all directions.
So, much as I rue the New Rools, as the Tools du Jour, here you are:
NO MORE HAND-SHAKING, in greeting or departure!
NO MORE HIGH FIVES!
NOT EVEN FIST BUMPS NOW!
NO CONTACT WHAT SO EVER…
TILL FURTHER NOTICE…
I hand-shake you all, in my mind, and thank you for reading this.
PS: In no way do I mean to make light of, or minimize the risk represented by the still-new reality of this truly hideous Pandemic situation; this is just one small aspect of my reaction to something most of us did not see coming…
— Wayne Perras, blogging from Saratoga Springs, Upstate NY, as of March 11, 2020