High Five Anxiety

Bear with me; this is going to be a long setup.

As I was leaving today a coworker, Ms. X, referenced the Ghostbusters movie theme song (“I ain’t afraid of no ghosts!”). I started to joke about what Ray Parker Jr. was doing right now (something to do with booze and lounge singing). Ms. X was shocked, SHOCKED!, that I knew who Ray was.

Woman please, my snotty group of 11 year old friends called ourselves the “Ghostbusters” at day camp. I probably still have the Ghostbusters painter’s cap that I wore. . . I faintly remember some sort of gray Ghostbusters shirt. . .was it sleeveless? I can’t remember.

Anyways, we were having a good laugh about the song and Ray when another coworker, Mr. Y, walked in. While Mr. Y probably has seen the movie and heard the song there was little chance that he remembered who performed the song. But when I told him that we were talking about Ray he responded (in a deep, “soulful” voice) “I ain’t afraid of no ghosts!” WTF! Ms. X and I started freaking out and laughing. It was a riot until Ms. X offered up a High Five Opportunity (HFO). I was able to execute this one but just barely.

For some reason I just don’t get high fives. HFOs just make me nervous and slightly weirded out. Maybe it’s the overt camaraderie or the situations that I am in when HFOs occur. It’s usually work related; we’re not curing cancer, just celebrating some minor, lame made-up victory.

When ever a HFO occurs time seems to slow down for me as I stare at the hand. Lord, I hope time stands still and I’m not just standing there like an idiot. I usually miss the opportunity or miss their hand completely.

Those few beats are pretty intense for me. My brain is usually chugging away on four fronts during that pause: should I respond?, is this person cool enough to be offering a HFO?, trajectory and force of my potential response and a brief analysis of whether this HF is warranted. It’s the last one that gets me. I don’t really do anything with others that requires a HF; I’m not a team player, I don’t play sports and as mentioned above I haven’t cured cancer. HFs should be reserved for something truly momentous and I can’t get behind an unworthy HF.

I think some people can sense this. They usually learn after one awkward HFO with me. About a month ago I was third in a row of people and a passing person was high fiving the first two. Then he got to me and he ended up trying to shake my hand instead. Unfortunately I was already for the HF damnit. It just ended up being a weird moment involving both a HF and handshaking. It was like Richard Simmons and Oprah were freaking out about some fat-burning cheese cake.

I just hope that my successful HF (which I was slightly shocked to have actually done) today doesn’t get around. I can’t be expected to slap everyone’s damn hand just because we got in new PostIt notes.