{"id":43080,"date":"2020-06-10T01:39:30","date_gmt":"2020-06-10T01:39:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=43080"},"modified":"2020-06-10T01:39:30","modified_gmt":"2020-06-10T01:39:30","slug":"goodbye-to-a-social-custom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=43080","title":{"rendered":"Goodbye to a social custom"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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This damn global pandemic is claiming many social customs along with the human beings it is sickening and, tragically, killing.<\/p>\n

I refer to one of them: shaking of hands when you greet friends.<\/p>\n

Doctors and assorted other medical experts tell us that handshakes are being put aside while the world fights against the global viral infection that has killed 110,000-plus Americans.<\/p>\n

This disturbs me. I am a hand-shaker. I enjoy greeting old friends and making new friends with a hearty handshake. I consider my handshake to be firm, but not crushing. I expect the same from those I meet for the first time or those with whom I reconnect.<\/p>\n

We’re left now with “fist bumps” and “elbow bumps” and waving at each other from across the room. My wife and I ventured to Amarillo recently over the Memorial Day weekend. I had hoped to see old friends while we were there. I got cold feet. The instances of viral infections in Randall and Potter counties made me jittery. Thus, I was unwilling to see old friends, offer a handshake or an embrace.<\/p>\n

This fist- and elbow-bumping ain’t my style, man.<\/p>\n

The latest edition of the AARP Bulletin arrived this week and it tells us that the custom of shaking hands, which dates back to ancient Greece, is a goner … at least for well past the foreseeable future. AARP quotes Harvard University epidemiologist William Hanage, who recommends we greet each other with a “sanitary Star Trek salute and a hearty ‘Live long and prosper.'”<\/p>\n

The pandemic, says Jeffrey Cole, director of the Center for the Digital Future at the University of Southern California, has created the “single greatest disruption of our lifetime.”<\/p>\n

So, you thought it was only a handshake, right? Hardly. Get ready for the “new normal.”<\/p>\n\n

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This damn global pandemic is claiming many social customs along with the human beings it is sickening and, tragically, killing. I refer to one of them: shaking of hands when you greet friends. Doctors and assorted other medical experts tell us that handshakes are being put aside while the world fights against the global viral … Continue reading Goodbye to a social custom<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[9236,9398,9261],"class_list":["post-43080","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-medical-news","tag-coronavirus","tag-handshake","tag-pandemic"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43080","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=43080"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43080\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43082,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43080\/revisions\/43082"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=43080"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=43080"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=43080"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}