Free Hugs. Er, Anyone Interested?

By Fred Bruning

Oct. 20, 2024

     How do we feel about hugs?

     The Mets embraced each other so vigorously after a recent showdown victory you wondered if half the lineup would be out for the next series with cracked ribs.

     Bromantic locker room clinches are a programmed part of big league pageantry but what about the rest of us?

     Garrison Keillor, former host of the “Prairie Home Companion” radio show, said in a recent commentary that he is startled by the affection of fans who – without warning – wrap their arms around him.

     “I am in Wenatchee, Washington, the Apple Capital of the World, on the Columbia River in the Cascades, being clutched to people’s bosoms,” said Keillor, who, at 82, still entertains around the country. “Apparently, they consider me a friend. I reciprocate but don’t understand it.”

      Here’s my guess about the enduring power of a good hug – it’s a way of showing how much we need each other, that we are strangers only by accident, that the hustlers who make a fortune insisting we are bent on mutual destruction are as mistaken as one of those doomsday cults that meets every year anticipating The End only to find – aw, nuts – we survived again and have to go to work Monday morning, after all.

The End is Near, Advance Publications, Inc./The New Yorker

    

Some see it differently.

     I know a person who is an adamant opponent of the impromptu hug.

     This otherwise is a perfectly reasonable individual but with a highly developed sense of personal space.

     Those unaware of her do-not-trespass disposition will be in for a surprise when, upon drawing close, they are halted and instructed firmly: “I do not hug.”

     “Oh, oops, sorry,” I heard a nonplussed person say, retreating to a neutral zone. “Didn’t know.”

     Keillor explains he was reared as a midwestern evangelical with worshipers who “weren’t huggers by nature.”

    Same for me back east in Brooklyn.

    Filling the pews at St. John’s Lutheran, Prospect Avenue, was a similarly reticent flock – sober, working-class Germans, mostly, with names like Messerschmidt, Weinreich and Edebohls who kept emotions in check even when organist Henry Bottenberg played thunderous versions of, “Onward, Christian Soldiers.”

     Not an “A-men!” or “Hallelujah” in the house.

     At coffee hour following Sunday services, parishioners would chat briefly, wish each other well and – with handshakes and a tip of the fedora for men, or maybe a little flutter of hands among women of the Ladies’ Aid Society – head home to prepare for the week ahead.

      Not much hugging accompanied the apple strudel, so far as I can remember.

      Somewhere along the line, though, I encountered less reticent folks.

      My wife, Wink, who I met in college, knows how to hug – a good thing then and now – and, Kent, a free-spirited roommate in Missouri, and Anne, whose hugs were like the Heimlich maneuver, and Mike in Long Beach who embraces all the world; my old Newsday pal, Gwen and Ilene, who draws friends close after lively lunchtime conversation.

      I’m aboard.

      Professionals have entered the field, of course – folks who show up at street festivals wearing placards promising “Free Hugs” (prudence advised), and Amma, a Hindu spiritual leader who claims to have hugged nearly 40 million people and is known as the “hugging saint,” and the husband-wife team of Brainard and Delia Carey who wrote the 2012 book, “The Art of Hugging: A Heartwarming Guide to Everyone's Favorite Gesture of Love.”

      The Careys claim hugging “perhaps has the ability to truly change the world” which is exceedingly good news. Shall we test the theory by enfolding Vladimir Putin in our ever-loving arms while urging he abandon hopes of reprising Peter the Great?  Volunteers? Step forward, please.

     Yes, you can easily slide off the hippie-dippy end of things and, in general, must use good judgment.

     Do not linger too long in an embrace – there will be talk – or take note of anything sprouting from another’s ear, or pat a person in the midsection and say, “Off the diet, I guess?”

     My approach is to proceed with caution and, if not waved away within a foot or two, extend arms and take hold. Occasionally, I bestow a gentle pinch of the cheek and, only when allowed and appropriate, a kiss.

     I am not aiming to depose Amma, the hugging saint. The idea is only to assert continued belief in peaceful coexistence and power of the human touch – and make up for all those lost opportunities after strudel at St. John’s.

    Previous Invisible Ink posts at: https://fredbruning.substack.com/archive