Bugged by Hugs

Published April 8, 2008

By Lea McLellan

Hugs are everywhere. It’s kind of warm out today…why not celebrate with a hug! You see your friend at the Davis Center after a long ten hours apart? Hug time! See a kid from your math class whom you’ve never spoken to, but kind of recognize at a party? Hugs all around. Lab partner looking a little down? Hug it out.

The word is full of happy huggers. And my deep, dark secret is…I am not one of them. If I see a friend or acquaintance, my first instinct is not to hug them. I don’t know why I’m not a natural born hugger. I definitely received enough love as a child. Unless it’s a memory I’ve repressed, I haven’t had any horrible hug experiences that left me scarred for life. I grew up in Connecticut-so maybe it’s a side effect of my stoic, New England culture. It could be a birth defect.

Let me qualify. I’m not a cold, unfeeling freak of nature. I don’t hate being hugged or touched. If someone hugs me, I’m capable of hugging back without much difficulty. Although these friendly embraces sometimes make me feel uncomfortable, they don’t make me want to vomit.

In fact, I’ve been working on being more outgoing with my hugs. You know, to fit in with normal hugging society. Still, I have to admit that I’m not all the way reformed in my anti-hug ways. And the life of a non-hugger can be a tough one.

The biggest mistake you can make as a non-hugger is telling people that you aren’t all that into hugging. This is something I’ve learned the awkward way. One apt example of my non-huggy tendencies gone awry took place back in high school. If you have ever played a sport, you will know that teams often get together before games to bond and create team unity. My friend and I, like the good seniors we were, planned a fun night of gossip, s’mores, and assuring the scared freshmen that we weren’t going to haze the shit out of them.

The party was winding down, meaning everyone had eaten too many marshmallows, and we had already looked through the yearbook identifying all the senior boys the freshman girls thought were cute (yes, we actually did that). Anyways, one of the newly comfortable and confident members of the team, in true girly tennis fashion, went around hugging everyone goodbye.

When she got to me, my obnoxious co-captain loudly warned, “Um, Lea doesn’t like hugs.” The poor freshman stopped immediately. A look of fear and confusion crossed over her face. “Oh. Okay, well um…bye.” And she waved frantically and ran away to her mom’s car. The poor kid-I felt like I might as well have smeared peanut butter in her hair and made her bark like a dog. (Is that what hazers do?)

I only have one, maybe two, non-hugger friends who are “out.” It’s great. We see each other when we come home from school and there’s an understanding. We wave, we just say “hi”. We look in one another’s eyes and there’s that realization that we don’t actually need to hug each other to communicate our feelings.

But I know that my friend and I are rarities in this increasingly hug-oriented world. You can’t get away with a simple nod, or a handshake anymore. It’s all about the hug. So I’ve decided to change my ways. Already I’ve become a lot better at receiving the hug. Initiating the hug is the logical next step to work on. It won’t be easy, but it must be done.

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