So I’m out having coffee with Ken and some of his friends. He sees some girl he knows and, for some reason, keeps stressing to her about my availability, mostly as a joke. We shake hands and the first words out of her mouth are, “You shake hands like a woman . . . sorry, I call ‘em like I see ‘em.”

You ever notice how a social troglodyte ends a sentence with, “I call ‘em how I see ‘em,” or “I just say it like it is” (there are other variations)? They try and mask a weakness as a virtue – as if their social ineptitude was really a an uncompromising quest for the hard truth.

Anyway, I was minding my own business, talking with the girl I did know, about spiritual and philisophical topic of zombie movies, when this sudden challenge to my masculinity was thrown in my lap (but to be fair, I don’t have a consistent method or pressure setting that I shake hands with…it’s different every time). But it was too late, the shake was done, not to be lamented. Since I didn’t have any particular interest in having Ken acting as some kind of mischievous cupid, I put on my best psychotic face (I practice these in the mirror, while you sleep) and said, “Oh . . . sorry . . . ever since shattering that little kindergartner’s hand, I’ve just been too afraid to shake with gusto.”