You’re buying crisps or crayons or maybe some emergency cat treats at the shop around the corner. There’s no self-service checkout available so you have to ‘go to the person’. And in the process of the transaction, you do several clumsy things, like drop your coins, forget how to speak coherently and accidentally touch the other person’s hand.
It’s fine… just unnecessary. Even so, as you turn away, clutching your hastily purchased crisps/crayons/cat treats, you keep thinking about it. The germs that have happily leapt from the cashier’s hand to yours. Germs which are now multiplying billions of times. You vow to be more careful next time, but it always happens.Â
Here’s a different scenario. Without meaning to, you touch the hand of someone you really like – and you don’t want them to know of your attraction. You’re annoyed with yourself, wishing it hadn’t happened because now they’ll be thinking you’re deliberately making physical contact and you’re feeling very awkward and maybe they are too… But the chances are that they’ve instantly forgotten it. For the rest of the week, you brood upon the incident.
You can almost feel the touch of their hand, the hand that you brushed against for a nanosecond.
Awkward! is a series about those tricky situations we encounter in everyday life. Last month’s episode was about pavement battles…
I can totally relate to this post, I hate it when I have to speak to an actual person 🙂
I used to work in retail and a lot of the older customers would touch my hand or put their hands on my arm, and they always had really dry papery skin. *shudders*
Oh dear, I guess some people (elderly in particular) need the human contact. But at the same time it’s not nice when you don’t want to be touched, even if just on the hand.
Thanks for your comment 😉
I’m always careful with how I pass people money but sometimes they seem to want to touch my hand…eugh?. ???
Ha ha – sometimes the hand touching seems unavoidable, other times it’s an accident. 😀
Haha, this has reminded me of the time that two of my friends got squashed together at a gig and when they drew apart their fingers had somehow interlaced. The quiet but obviously desperate panic on their faces was a picture.
That’s amusing – we can get so embarrassed to accidentally make physical contact but I suppose some people are more bothered about it than others 🙂