Let’s shake on it

One of the Commonwealth’s best assets is its mixture of island culture, Asian culture, and American culture. And before you tell me that there’s no such thing as American culture, consider the CNMI’s nice wide roads, orderly driving manners (usually), clean restaurants, and (ahem) overall hygienic standards that keep the tropical germs at bay. I, for one, am profoundly grateful for these blessings.

But there’s one aspect of American culture that I hope we purge: the handshake.

The only thing more yucky than a snake slithering up my leg is some stranger’s germy little flapper sweating into my palm. Likewise, I can’t see why anybody would want to grasp my clammy little mitts.

So here’s a worthy goal for the New Year: We’ll wipe out the handshake along with our old enemy, the brown tree snake. I look forward to some public service television commercials; they could just dub out the word “brown tree snake” and replace it with “handshake.” Indeed: “If you see a handshake…kill it, and call the authorities.”

Yes, kill it. Kill it with a stick. Or kill it with a machete, kill it with a Batangas balisong, kill it with a machete. True, until people get the point we’ll have a lot of spontaneous amputations taking place in public, but the Commonwealth Health Center could use the business anyway.

To lend some intellectual weight to my crusade, I’ll invoke the obligatory academic, pipe-sucking dweeb. And thus we make the acquaintance of one Lin Yutang. Says Yutang, in his book The Importance of Living:

“I object to this custom (shaking hands) for hygienic and many other reasons. Shaking hands is a form of human contact subject to the finest variations and distinctions…an original American graduate student could very well write a doctorate dissertation on a ‘Time-and-Motion Study of the Varieties of Hand-Shaking.’”

Whooie, true enough, which is as much an indictment of the puffery in the American academic system as it is of handshakes, eh?

OK, more from Mr. Yutang:

“Now consider the hygienic objections. The foreigners in Shanghai, who describe our copper coins as regular reservoirs of bacteria and will not touch them, apparently think nothing of shaking hands with any Tom, Dick, or Harry on the street.”

Indeed. The worst of the worst comes when you’re just about to sink your chops into your burger in a restaurant and a gaggle of folks happens by your table. They want to exchange niceties, and all reflexively stick out their hands for a handshake. How can we not mock that while we mock dogs sniffing each others butts?

Heck, the handshake is marginally worse. Boonie dogs have got more sense than my round-eyed, big-nosed brethren do.

Since I propose the elimination of the handshake, somebody is bound to ask what it should be replaced with. That’s easy. We’ll replace it with…nothing.

No bows. No salutes. No kisses. No butt sniffing.

And once we’ve got this situation rectified, we’ll consider the necktie, yet another curse.

But first things first. Even the humblest among us can do their share to make 2006 the year of leave my mitts alone.

Promise to help me out?

Good, let’s shake on it.

Oops!