I used to hate high fiving people but lately I’ve seen a resurgence of this multi use practice and I want back on the band wagon. I say “multi-use” because if you think about it, high fiving is so versatile. You can use it as a greeting, a congratulations, a celebratory action, a way to make a fool of someone as in “high five, down low, too slow”, and even as a hip performance as in high fiving in the front as you walk by someone and then following with a reverse low five just as you pass. The most awesome thing about high fives is that you don’t even need a cooperative or even aware partner for a high five. I was at the trial for a murderer, as a witness, last month. When he stood up and the bailiff told him to raise his right hand to swear his oath I leapt over the table towards him. I managed to steal a free high five on his raised right hand before the bailiff pepper sprayed and beat me unconscious with his baton. The verdict on court room oath high fives? Totally worth it! As if that wasn’t awesome enough I went to a neo Nazi rally I heard about on AryanNations.org. I was drunk with ecstasy when everyone “Heiled Hitler”. Let’s just say that when I woke up in the hospital a week later the only thing that hurt more than my broken jaw and crushed testicle, was the bruise on my hand from all those involuntary high fives I stole! I can’t, however, say the same for the Black Panthers rally that I went to because you can’t high five a raised fist. So, I didn’t get any high fives there, but I did, however, get my first gunshot wound in my left ass cheek, so that’s pretty cool. I’ve been going crazy lately. I’ve been slapping fives at auctions when they raise their hands; whacking the shit out of those little smarty nerds in elementary school classes that know the answers; getting some mid range fives from dirty bums with their hands out for change; people hailing cabs, and sailor’s wives on the pier as their husband’s ships sail away on deployment. In fact, I’ve high fived so many times in the last month that I’ve developed quite the callus on my palm. So much so that I could give a hand job to a running chainsaw and probably not feel it. Despite the rough hands I plan on continuing in my palm punishing quest. The more high fives I give, the more it catches on and therefore the more high fives I get. It’s a perpetual motion machine of high fives and I’m right in the middle of it.
