Group hug

ESOTERICA

The New York Times this morning picks up on the latest teen phenomenon: hugs.

Girls embracing girls, girls embracing boys, boys embracing each other—the hug has become the favorite social greeting when teenagers meet or part these days. Teachers joke about "one hour" and "six hour" hugs, saying that students hug one another all day as if they were separated for the entire summer.

I can't say this is exactly news to me, and, I suppose, one could ask rhetorically, "What harm could it do?" Alas,

Comforting as the hug may be, principals across the country have clamped down. "Touching and physical contact is very dangerous territory," said Noreen Hajinlian, the principal of George G. White School, a junior high school in Hillsdale, N.J., who banned hugging two years ago. "It was needless hugging—they are in the hallways before they go to class. It wasn’t a greeting. It was happening all day."

I'm struck by the comments of an aspiring Emily Post regarding the fad:

"If somebody were to not hug someone, to never hug anybody, people might be just a little wary of them and think they are weird or peculiar," said Gabrielle Brown, a freshman at Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School in Manhattan.

That, of course, would be me.