Hand shaking is so stupid

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I'm a limp hand shaker. I'm that that way because I don't really want to be doing it at all.

Since I have been on WP I have learned so much about being on the Spectrum. Since then I have been to one Autism expo where I met a couple of Autistic people. I have also met one more person recently. Now whenever I meet someone on the Spectrum I always ask the person, "Do you shake hands?" before I reach out my hand. If they do not then I completely respect that and I don't make any deal of it, I just smile and say hi without shaking the person's hand.

It's a good way to read palms.

Add me to the list of people who finds handshaking weird, especially weird when you meet this person on a regular basis. I can understand a handshake when meeting someone for the first time but in Eastern Europe you might find yourself shaking someone's hand once a day, every day as they come in through the office door.

So far nobody has mentioned WHY men shake hands. It's something that goes back to the time when men carried swords and daggers, you can't shake someone's hand and carry a weapon at the same time so the custom of hand shaking was introduced.

It's been a long time since I carried a dagger on a regular basis (Boy Scouts in the early 1970's) so I reckon the custom should be dropped.

Maybe it was the way to show that they were not holding a weapon and meant peace and bonding upon meeting a person.

The weapon thing may or may not be accurate. I've heard the same thing a lot, but I've never seen any research cited. It seems like a potential "just so" story to me.

Touching people matters to everyone, though. People love it or hate it, but hardly anyone can just take it or leave it without some kind of emotional effect. Just touching a stranger makes that person less of a stranger. In Milgram's Obedience experiments, touching the "learner" reduced the participants' willingness to subject him to "painful electric shocks."

I can't not think about all the people that don't properly wash their hands after using the restroom whenever someone wants to shake my hand.

i actually don't think about germs, i'm just coming up with any reason i can to discourage it lol



um no i didn't. the only thing i said was i think there should be nodding or bowing like in parts of Asia instead of people wanting to grab everyone one way or another as a greeting and make an issue of how they are grabbed back. i don't like the fact that it's basically a requirement. that one of the best ways to insult a stranger is not to take hold of his hand so his hand and your hand are intertwined like the hands were having sex with each other. and macho types always make it a squeezing contest and who lets go first etc. what's even more funny to me is if a man met another person for the first time and said, "would you hold my hand for a few minutes?" the other person would be repulsed and think the guy a total creep or weirdo. right?

I don't like hand shaking. I like my hands to be free, not being squeezed by someone else's.
I don't like the feel of it as well.

If the person didn't want to be touched, they would certainly feel that way. I respect your preferences, but projecting your opinions onto other people disregards the perfectly reasonable counter-argument that people shake hands because they get something positive out of the practice. If you don't rigidify your current attitude within yourself, you might come to appreciate it. Saying that, I suddenly remembered other social conventions that I previously rejected as absurd, and which I now accept as worthwhile even when I don't personally enjoy them.

Try taking a microbiology class. It's the worst possible/best possible thing ever for someone with OCD. For instance, the totoal number cells on our body are about 90% non-human. What makes up the rest? Mostly bacteria. Bacteria are great--we NEED them to survive. We'd suffer through terrible health problems without an effective microbiota in our small intestines.

The biggest problem that comes with being aware of microbiology is learning about pathogenic organism--especially those with dreaded endospores. Endospores are protected shells on the genetic information of a bacteria that makes them literally indestructible. There are agents that can obliterate the bacteria, but the endospores live on for millions upon millions of years; lying dormant until it finds itself in the right conditions and is ready to leave its dormancy. Sanitizer is a great quick fix, but you're taking those endospores home with you, and with it some nice bacilli-based diseases.

Additionally, it's very disturbing to know that bacteria and viruses need a strong emulsifying action with a detergent to be destroyed, so when I'm in a public restroom and constantly see people walk out with washing their hands, or just splash some water on their hands for a couple seconds, I internally panic. Am I going to be shaking hands with someone like that later? Are my hands going to now be covered with bacteria that if cultured would formed would be encapsulated? Ugh. I can't think about this stuff

Basically, I never shake hands unless someone sticks their hand out, and then I go in for the stealth attack and do the one beat hand shake. Then I wash ASAP. By the way, the most effective way to wash one's hands is to use very warm water and wash vigorously singing Yankee Doodle in your head. Once the song is up, rinse of the soap. The reason why, is the song is about 15 seconds long, which is the minimal time required to have sanitary hands.

Women often hug. That really sucks. I'm just like "I barely know you, b***h, get off me."
Give me handshakes any day.