My grandfather taught me a long time ago as a kid to always give a firm handshake. Thinking back, it’s a bit surprising. He was born in the early 1900’s. He was quite conservative. Yet he taught his young granddaughter to never ever give what I call a floppy-dead-fish handshake.
I call it that because I was given a floppy-dead-fish today and it had the feel of someone offering me a limp, dead fish. I thought, “What a lame guy”. His was worse than some… it was a floppy-dead-guppy – just the tips of the fingers as if he couldn’t be put out to offer a real handshake to a woman. I’ve been offered these handshakes at times by men and women alike and I think less of the people offering them. Many people feel the same. If you’re in the US, at least if you’re in the Northeast, make sure you always offer a firm handshake.
Feel free to let us know about handshake customs where you live and check out my post about greeting customs from around the world.
This article was posted on Thursday, August 12th, 2010 at 7:59 pm and is filed under Countries & Cultures, Customs and Traditions, English, Greeting Customs, Mama Lisa, USA. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
3 Responses to “Never Give a Floppy-Dead-Fish Handshake!”
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August 12th, 2010 at 8:04 pm
[…] Check out my later post about the importance of giving a firm handshake, especially to women in the Northeast US and feel free to comment there too. Share on Facebook […]
August 13th, 2010 at 12:17 am
Handshakes are my bane. Whenever it comes time to shake hands, it’s inevitably after I’ve just sneezed, or coughed up a lungful of phlegm, or licked my thumb and run it along my niece’s cheek to get the crud off, or eaten some revoltingly orange “food”, or picked my nose (sorry). And then I’m stuck lamely wiping my hand on my shirt and saying “I think we’d better not, I don’t want you getting sick”.
August 14th, 2010 at 9:09 am
I think there are times when you have to make an excuse… most people would prefer it in that case.