High Five Anxiety

Having gone home for a weekend, I feel renewed and better equipped to criticize the world, especially my own state.

Apparently a school in Northern Virginia has a strict no-touching policy. The second you first hear that, you're probably thinking to yourself, "Good, I should hope someone gets expelled or fired for touching Jimmy or Jane's no-no places." But this is full-fledged no contact. That means that whenever some girl in school cries (probably a fairly frequent occurrence) she doesn't have a shoulder to cry on. Even more appalling, there's a ban on handshakes and high-fives. My immediate reaction? "Fuck that."

The high-five is odd. It's only been around since the late seventies, and it's a cultural staple. I remember one night when my friends and I were hanging out and decided to walk around downtown. One guy (ironically the only guy who hadn't been drinking) proposed a high-five contest. Our party would walk around downtown, trying to get as many high-fives as we could from whoever happened to be on the street. Naturally, this sounded like a great idea to those of us who had been drinking, so we ran with it. What puzzled me is that the sober guy who proposed this idea was in the lead from the start. Every high-five he received from passing strangers was met with a hearty "yes!" and a fist pump, like you had just suggested we find and beat up his arch-enemy.

He's also originally from Northern Virginia. Just imagine if he were forced to go to this school where his high-fives were offenses against school code. I could easily envision him leading a campaign to be elected class president solely on the platform of re-establishing the legality of high-fives. He probably couldn't give a shit about hugs or handshakes, but he has a talent for getting you really excited about high-fives. I imagine it would even work if you were listening to him when you were sober.