This time of year I can't help but get squeamish about shaking hands. That sinus infection or flu that maybe just got pressed into my palm for the sake of formalities. Not good.
Shaking with the right hand is a Global custom-- perhaps the most famous. In Middle Eastern culture this is especially important.
That is because traditionally in Middle Eastern culture, you pass food, eat, wave, and shake with the right hand-- and wipe your ass with the left.
It's a hygiene thing. And everyone knows everyone else wipes their ass with the left, so doing anything else with it is an insult.
It's "the devil you know" philosophy put to widespread use. And It occurred to me that while the right-hand-shake tradition remains in Western Culture, hygienically speaking, we are all most likely shaking each other's ass-wipe hand.
70-90% of the world is right handed. And since the advent of Tee Pee and hand soap, our culture has shifted to dominant hand ass-wiping. At least that is my hypothesis.
What percentage of Western Society wipes their ass with a dollar bill, picks their nose, presses the elevator button, punches in their zip code at the fuel pump, and then shakes yours-- with their right hand? Probably 70-90%.
During the campaign, Barack Obama liked to tout how many dollars we could save at the pump if we simply filled our tires up with air.
Hand-washing aside, I wonder how many colds and diseases wouldn't get passed along in Western culture if we switched to shaking with the clean, left hand.
Since that dream faded with Bob Dole in '96, maybe we can all just agree to do the fist-bump this Winter.
And maybe the ass-slap come Spring.
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