On greetings
So, the United States is a melting pot (or salad bowl?) of cultures. This is nowhere more reflected than in how people greet each other. There’s waaaay too many ways and they can be difficult and treacherous waters to navigate. Living in New York I have crashed into rocky shoals more often then I care to admit.
Same sex greetings tend to be fairly straight forward. Men almost uniformly start with a handshake, this can lead into the one arm hug/back pat. This can also end with any of a variety or power shakes - it is here that the unprepared man can get into trouble since culturally many of these shakes are incompatible. To end in the finger snap? Or perhaps just a tug? Difficult, difficult. On rarer occasion, the hand shake can be bypassed with a fist pound. This, when present, can compete with the handshake and can lead to some confusing fist-open hand-fist combinations as partners react simultaneously to the other. Oh, what a humorous situation that is! In general, though, men have a pretty easy time of it.
Women greeting other women sometimes go with the handshake, but go in for the half hug (arms on shoulders, not all the way around) with much greater frequency. This also coincides with the first, and greatest greeting peril, the cheek kiss count. This is a problem for mixed gender greetings, as well. Different cultures use a single cheek kiss, others use two, there are even reports of a rarely seen and perhaps mythical culture wherein three kisses are the order of the day. We thank our lucky stars that at least it seems to be a pan-cultural fact that the kissing begins always on the right cheek.
I believe that the single kiss tends to be more Latin American where the double kiss is European (although I could be wrong about that, I took an incomplete in my college cheek-kiss-ology class). The triple, well, I’m not sure where that’s from. As an American where the cheek kiss is an imported culture, not a natural one, I am always on my guard during the kiss and thus can adapt very quickly if a second kiss is called for. However, hilarity can ensue when a single kisser meets with a double kisser - since the single in general isn’t paying attention after the first kiss it is not uncommon for the double to go in for the second expecting the other’s head to be in proper kiss position, which it is unfortunately not and the kiss gets planted squarely on the mouth. Ah what crazy times.
In mixed gender greetings the first difficulty encountered, though, is the handshake vs the hug/kiss. While there are at times, clear indicators where one is called for, there is a grey middleground where either could be used. This can often result in a stutter step and then either a handshake or a mildly uncomfortable hug. Sometimes the stress can be overwhelming and the involved parties simply step back and wave - an incredibly inauspicious beginning, but understandable given the circumstances!
The final difficulty one might come across is when going in for a hug determining whether a half hug or full hug is in order. A half hug, involves simply placing the hands on the shoulders or top of the arms and going in. This is generally used in concert with the cheek kiss. However, sometimes the kiss is bypassed and a full hug is used. There are no rules for this, some people simply are not cheek kissers and it is not possible to identify these people in advance. One must simply be on one’s toes.
So there it is. These are just observations from the field, I offer no solutions to these problems, I simply illuminate them for your own internal reflection.
