Thursday, October 6, 2011

Life's Short, You Might Wanna Consider Holding His Hand

I'm an advocate of hand holding. I'm an advocate of hand holding to a point. I'll get to "the point" a little later. In a world filled with communicable diseases and paranoia, it's kind of amazing anyone is willing to hold hands with anyone. (No I haven't seen Contagion yet, but it seems like it might push me from careful to OCD.) We all carry hand sanitizers in our purses and try and remember how many verses of Happy Birthday we're supposed to sing in our heads to indicate a thorough hand washing. (It's 2 verses.) More to the point, a hand hold seems an innocent enough gesture emotionally, but it's often an intimacy step missed in some relationships.

If you have a casual night with a guy (or a girl) you might have skipped the hand holding stage and moved right on to well, yeah know. When did our nether regions become more active than our hands? Anatomically, hands have about more nerve endings than most other parts of your body. We are programmed to touch and explore both to prevent harm and learn about our surroundings. Yet, often we ignore this impulse to explore and prevent harm with others. For fear of moving too fast, physically, emotionally?

These days hand holding is mainly reserved for couples and parent/child scenarios. For most it induces a level of trust, protection, and love between the two people. Although often as children we couldn't wait until we were big enough to stop holding Mom's hand while crossing the street. Abandoning this connection becomes a rite of passage in our lives somehow. And then we spend the rest our lives trying to find the person we want to hold our hand for (hopefully) the rest of our lives.

While I may hold issue with touching a stranger's hand (I'm a bubble prayer Catholic, don't touch my hand during the Our Father), except those times a professional hand shake might be required, there are few things I love more than when my boyfriend will subtly grab my hand as we are walking down the street.

Not to be confused with this nonsense:



Yes folks, that's called a Smitten. Feel free to throw up a little bit. This is what I meant by holding hands "to a point." First off, I'd like to point out that this couple's other hands are uncovered, so why bother? Secondly, if your mittens are interfering with your romantic grip that much, then maybe it's you, not the mittens. Aren't there operations to prevent this exact scenario in twins? This brings clingy relationships to a whole new level, what guy would EVER wear this? Can you imagine if Kate and Leo had one of these?


I guess one of their hands would have been warm right?

Title Quote from Sex and the City

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