A Bug's Life

I was pondering some of the common difficulties in hugging, and contemplating doing an illustrated book in the style of Kathleen Keating's The Little Book of Hugs (not using camels as they are difficult to draw hugging!).

When I fumble a hug in clumsy and graceless fashion, a typical failure mode is not achieving the complementary arm configuration. I approach - the huggee approaches. We raise our arms in preparation! I (say) have my left arm up (to go over the shoulder) and my right arm low (to go round the waist/torso): the huggee has mirrored this. Oh no! We're going to clash! Quickly, I move my left arm down and my right arm up so we will fit together - just as the huggee adjusts their position to fit mine! Aieee! By then it's too late and one person ends up smacking the other upside the nose with their elbow, or you do manage the hug but with one arm of the four crushed between you in a most uncomfortable angle.

It seems common for people to have a preferred angle, or chirality, for hugging. The semaphore flag code seems
a) an excellent way of denoting this, and
b) opens the mind to new hugging possibilities!

At first I thought the best representation of the hug approach pattern was one arm high, one arm low (the other positions are up, down, and out). This can be seen in
, representing the characters "L" and "annul".
That's no good! If someone comes up to you with a nice friendly L you don't want to reject their approach by signalling "annul" at them!

A better option is denote your default chirality by
"Q" and "Y".
I'm a Q, myself.

Attempts to synchronise chirality often result in
"Error" (LH and RH raised and lowered together)
- the windmilling approach discussed earlier. Although reducing the spontaneity of the occasion, the best tactic can be to retreat and make another attempt more slowly, rather than risk injury.

Be wary of huggers who approach with an
"S" - they could be coming in for a grope of the buttocks!


"Z" should only be attempted by experienced practitioners, as you could easily break an arm.

Note: Do not try hugging while holding actual signalling flags - you could have someone's eye out.

All diagrams were taken from this page, which is oddly sponsored by the Australian National Botanic Gardens.

One of the most useful hugging techniques I have learnt is that when something goes wrong, to smile and continue the hug as if there's no problem. The alternative, of leaping away and cringing, tends to leave the parties uncomfortable and self-conscious.

I like to save my cringing and falling through the floor moments for when I am safely on my own, and eventually become able to laugh at myself. Triggering events have included, as well as the crushing/elbowing mentioned above,
- the OMG he's much taller than I realised and I've accidentally grabbed his bum instead of his waist! hug
- and the aren't women's chests squashy? Isn't this weird? We should have gone in at a different angle! hug.

Thank you for reading - I hope this has been useful, or at least mildly entertaining. It is probably now time to punch someone on the shoulder and talk about sports.