On one of the stations tonight they showed one of my favorite "Seinfeld" episodes. It's the one were Jerry decides to take a stand on the very important issue of kissing people hello. As he makes his stand, he winds up pissing off all of his neighbors who think he's being rude by not kissing them hello. I like the episode because I got the same issue. Not really with kissing people hello, which thankfully isn't something people really do here (New Jersey, on the other hand), but with hugging. I got issues with hugging. Sort of.

As you might gather, I am not a hugger. I actually wish I were, but I'm not and at the age of 36 it's probably to late to turn into one. And yes, there are people I hug but it can sometimes be awkward (and sometimes not). The problem I have with is when to hug and when not to hug.

It's easy with guys. Unless you're long, long friends and it's some sort of big occasion, then hugging is not done. Guys can just do the hand shake or the high-five of the post-millenium age, the knuckle tap. All of that works fine. The problem usually comes with women. Women are tricky in these regards because it just doesn't feel right to give them a handshake. The knuckle tap definitely not. Which means hugging. But when is hugging okay? Is hugging okay after a first meeting? I know lots of situations where I've hugged after I just met them and I guess it's okay (sometimes fun), but it's not like we're that friendly and now we're having bodily contact. And once you hug, it's hard to go back, you're pretty much locked into hugging (unless, of course, it moves to the hello-kiss). And if it isn't a first meeting type thing, what are the rules here? Is it a second meeting thing? A third? Is it kind of the friendship equivalent of going all the way. You know, like we've both agreed we want to be friends with each other, so we'll start hugging now?

And then there are the women who you don't hug. Some women, for instance, are not quite huggers either. Or, you don't necessarily have a hugging kind of relationship. For instance, hugging is kind of awkward if there's any sort of tension. There are also some women with whom you don't have any sort of hugging chemistry whatsoever and by that I mean it just, for whatever reason, feels kind of weird. The question then becomes how do you say goodbye to them? And if you decide to bite the bullet and hug, when is it okay to start hugging? It gets all weird when you try and hug them. Or the whole thing is just so weird to begin with that there's no hugging involved. And if there's no hugging, does it look bad on the one not doing the hugging?