Wave? Shake? Salute?
, a problem that’s only gotten worse as I’ve discovered that all three seasons of the Nickelodeon seriesOne small aspect of everyday life, though, struck me when I was meeting a group of friends recently for a park hang, finally free of winter’s figure-swallowing parka silhouettes, scarves, and mittens.
I fretted internally, trying to pull together what felt like a “normal” physical posture as I approached the group, but feeling more like one of thosewith the posable limbs. After a year of socializing and working mostly via Zoom meeting, I was used to keeping my hands squarely out of frame and not thinking all that much, if at all, about my body language; suddenly, I felt like a sixth-grader at my first middle-school dance. If this predicament is in part about aesthetic awkwardness, though, it’s also about re-adjusting to a world in which touch is often centered in casual social interactions.’s senior features editor, says she balked when the guidance counselor at her son’s school went to shake her hand: “I shook it but the jolt was visceral,” Schama admits, adding, “The discomfort was strange, because in some ways, we’ve been more aware than ever of what we do with our hands, in terms of sanitizing and not touching subway poles and doors.” Elise Taylor,’s Living writer, reported a less COVID-influenced basis for hand discomfort when she was recently asked to pose for a photo at an event. “If this were 2019, I would have done what I always use to do—smile and fold my hands on my lap. But this is 2021, and my social skills, it turns out, have eroded faster than an Arctic iceberg,” Taylor says. “! Unfortunately, what I was doing was eating a jumbo shrimp cocktail! This is a very unappealing visual act—something that didn’t quite click until, well, the camera was about to. So, in a split-second decision, I decided to present my jumbo shrimp to the camera, like I’d just caught a prized stripe bass in the county river and wanted to impress the ladies looking at my dating app profile.”body-language expert Blanca Cobb, PsyD, explains. “I call them your emotional barometer.” As we move from isolation to cautious re-socialization, I’m starting to see the truth to Cobb’s statement. I’ve never been a particularly physically affectionate or touch-oriented person, but like Schama and Taylor, I’m having some trouble re-acclimatizing; from a reassuring pat on the shoulder from a friend to a firm handshake with a client or a loving hand-hold with a new partner, there are myriad ways we express our presence in society with our hands, and over the past year, I’ve gotten somewhat rusty on all of them.