So the custom hasn’t died…

I’ve lived in the States long enough now that sometimes I cannot tell if an old familiar Europeism has vanished from the continent by now, or whether it remains firmly in place.

This one apparently has survived (Chirac greeting IOC committee member, via bbc.com):



I have to say that I am quite comfortable jumping from one set of customs to another. And a man kissing the hand of a woman isn’t in itself so jarring as to make an outsider sit up and stare in disbelief. But when I returned to Poland (after six years in NY) as a young teen, I was utterly astonished to see my high school (boy) friends deftly kissing the hands of older women, including my mother, in greeting. Grown men in suits and ties, with hats quickly removed for the greeting – yes, fine. But my gawky classmates who still had some growing to do?? The ritual was fraught with tense moments for me even though I was a mere bystander to the entire event.

It did not help that my mother oftentimes did not cooperate. The norm is that the woman extends her hand in greeting. She would not. She’d start in on a brief verbal exchange (very brief, and only if circumstances placed her momentarily in the same physical space where my friends and I would be standing) while the poor boy would frantically keep his attention riveted to the moment when she would extend her hand, so that he’d be there to catch it. She rarely did and the moment would pass.

It was an overall good lesson in furthering a kid’s understanding of human nature: some people take pride in flaunting convention, some people are oblivious to it and some people are a combination of the two. Those in the latter category are a challenge, especially for a thirteen year old, who just wants that whole scene of parent-meeting-friend to pass as seamlessly, effortlessly as possible, so that parent likes friend and friend likes parent and you, there, in the middle, never have to worry about it again. The unkissed hand was like a bad omen, portending of rocky future friend-parent associations. Unfortunately, most often it proved to be a reliable indicator of exactly that.