HIGH FIVE

So around the beginning of the new year, I got initiated into Rhonda’s high five salutation circle.

Rhonda, also a fellow SJC resident, would occasionally depart a dinner or a gathering by asking for a high five. I’m sure almost everyone is familar with the near universal salutation of slapping two palms together in an energetic fashion.

At first I thought what an odd thing to do for a 23 year old woman to be doing. Asking other 20-somethings for a salutation you did mostly as a kid. I immediately thought of that episode of Seinfeld where Puddy is the car salesman. Puddy relentlessly asks Jerry for a high five.

I went along with Rhonda’s high five requests, but I think I once said to her, “We’re in a nice restaurant, I don’t think people do high fives here.”

Before, the only people I saw doing high fives were between little kids and little kids and adults. The problem with adults doing high fives is that you can look like an idiot if you don’t do it right. You know when one person overcommits and the other doesn’t enough and it just looks like lame hand pushing. Even Rhonda will ask you to do it again if you mess it up.

While I thought the high fives were at first odd, I have changed my opinions after several months. I believe the high fives harken back to simpler and more innocent times as kids when we first learned how to high five. When we were carefree human beings naive about the world in front of us.

So while Rhonda may have her own reasons why she needs to slap the hands of people around her, I will feel a small reminder of my past whenever she asks me to high five.