By Pierre Fontenot<\/b><\/p>\n
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If you\u2019re in the vicinity of my age you might have a similar memory of first-time realizing that a lot of people in America don\u2019t hug each other.<\/p>\n
I know. Kind of like my grandfather, getting his head around the idea that man really had landed on the moon. Just didn\u2019t seem possible.<\/p>\n
It starts with Momma. Southern mommas, they got the hugging gene, bad. Crying, get hugged, sad, get hugged, going to school, get hugged, just got home from school, get hugged, happy, get hugged, cute-as-a-bug, get hugged, just being alive and somehow related, you\u2019re gonna get hugged.<\/p>\n
Next to baby aspirin and kiss-\u2018n-make-it-all-better southern mommas think hugging cures just about anything. Stung by wasp, stepped on glass, failed by friend, Momma\u2019s got just the right hug for that\u2026<\/p>\n
Sibling discord, y\u2019all hug and make up. Third cousin ain\u2019t seen in ten years and-what\u2019s-your-name-again, gotta hug. That\u2019s Southern. Them two arms open up and it\u2019s just automatic with us. God bless the South and the stork that put me here. I\u2019d have been a misfit Yankee.<\/p>\n
An anthropologist should write this section.\u00a0 Ain\u2019t none around; I\u2019ll try to channel one.<\/p>\n
We\u2019re humans, but at core we\u2019re still wired like the rest of nature, to always be on guard. The act of opening up the arms reveals the unprotected torso, where all those vital organs dwell. To hug is to offer vulnerability.\u00a0 It\u2019s an offer of trust, and trust is a victory over the natural-us.<\/p>\n
Hurt me if you will. I\u2019m taking a chance on you. I think my hug is of greater value than what you can gain by taking advantage of my hug.<\/p>\n
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Sure, there are phony hugs. Like limp handshakes, a un-meant hug makes you just wanna shake your shoulders and pretend it never happened.<\/p>\n
Ahhhh, but there\u2019s the good ones\u2026 Southerners can\u2019t imagine not being able to say the good things with hugs: I\u2019ve known you since way back; I like you; I love you; I\u2019m sorry we got crossways; how can I ever thank you enough; I\u2019m so sad for you; here we are again after all these years\u2026<\/p>\n
Not everybody is good with words. Hugs give us a language of squeeze and cling and hold and pat that say things we don\u2019t know how to say.<\/p>\n
There are Great Hugs. I\u2019ve had a few. I had a cousin hug me, she latched on for a good solid minute, just wrapping me in her happy-to-see-me, her sadness-for-what-I\u2019d-been-through. There\u2019s not a chance that a 1,000 hours of conversation would accomplish what that hug said.<\/p>\n
Nobody hugs like a woman. I\u2019ve had women that loved me, and we\u2019ve gone our ways, but I remember certain hugs, when they squeezed me until love was running through me like Christmas morning and I still believe in Santa.<\/p>\n
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I say, let\u2019s hug, just because. They are around us, poor things, these people who grew up elsewhere, grew up in cold families formed from cold cultures, and they don\u2019t know it, but they got short-strawed in the affection department. It\u2019s one of our gospels, the good southern hug. It\u2019s our duty. To whom many hugs were given, many hugs are required.<\/p>\n
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I vote for honest hugging. Let\u2019s hug-like honest, let\u2019s hug-love honest, let\u2019s O-God-I-missed-you honest. There\u2019s a bunch o\u2019 billions of us on Earth, and only we few millions are Southern Americans; let\u2019s take advantage of our cultural right to hug like there\u2019s an angel present at every hug, reporting on sincerity.<\/p>\n
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This edition of Uncle P\u2019s Bedtime Stories is brought to you by Eighty-one, where we are in full favor of any tool that allows us to say You Matter.\u00a0 Some of the best hugs are up ahead. Heaven, hugs with O! Now I see!\u00a0 (Uncle P can be reached at 81creativity@gmail.com).<\/p>\n
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By Pierre Fontenot If you\u2019re in the vicinity of my age you might have a similar memory of first-time realizing that a lot of people in America don\u2019t hug each other. I know. Kind of like my grandfather, getting his head around the idea that man really had landed on the moon. Just didn\u2019t [&hellip<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n