Let’s hope hugs don’t vanish

We’re not discussing “tacky” here, just the warm, beneficial, feel-good, even therapeutic effects of what we’ve been doing since the dawn of time: hugging.

It’s something I grew into after several decades, but now, as an admittedly and increasingly emotional senior citizen, I’ve become much more of a hugger. A nasty old man? Never, just a hugger.

But let’s back up several decades. I believe that my late mother, Marie Trujillo, began realizing the preciousness of life when her first granddaughter, Stephanie came around. The fact that Stephanie’s mother, Dorothy, and her family lived in Phoenix made travel and family sightings a bit less frequent.

So seeing Steph became a joy, each visit ending with everyone’s lament, “I wish you didn’t have to leave so soon.”

Well, grandparenting tends to do that to families. I wasn’t quite the hugger that I am now until my own grandson and namesake appeared. Then, with the arrival of two more girls and a little Daness (my coinage for a female Dane), I guess I became incurable. I was almost a one-man Huggies commercial.

During the period called “passing of the peace” in my church, it seems every person hugs and/or shakes hands with every other person. Some simply aren’t “in” to hugging, and I believe the others respect that.

A number of years ago, before I retired from teaching, a Highlands official, an expert on hostile-environment, sexual-harassment issues, conducted a daylong workshop in which she spelled out the new rules on physical contact among teachers and students. I found it hard to believe it when she said, “Some of our students are almost never touched — unless it’s to be hit or sexually assaulted.”

Really? Eddie Ventura, my assistant in our desktop publishing classes, and I used to arrange our students in a circle, facing out, so we could see their computer screens. When he wanted the attention of a particular student (male or female), we’d lightly place our hands on the student’s back.

“I suggest you not do that anymore,” the counselor advised. “You don’t want to be facing charges, do you?” Facing charges? Eddie and I had taught that course for a dozen years, touched the shoulders of countless students, to get their attention, and now there’s something wrong with that? Nobody ever complained, at least not to us.

The counselor had a point: Some students might have resented the tactile additives, but were too polite or fearful to admit it.

What a pity that what started as a curative process (described in the first paragraph) has now become a means of degradation and exploitation in schools. But isn’t that the way most things happen? One person cheats and therefore every student needs to sign an honor pledge; one person writes a bad check and suddenly every restaurant in town accepts only cash or credit card; one person pushes the feel-good parameters of a hug and suddenly we all need to practice “sideways hugs,” both participants facing the same direction. And we need to undergo sensitivity training.

For close to 30 years, when Highlands had what we called “tank” registration (we all entered a huge tank, Wilson Complex or Stu Clark Gym, and fought over classes), I used to love and welcome the greetings, handshakes and hugs exchanged as students returned for another semester. I was often one of the willing participants.

From my observations, men are more reluctant to have a same-sex greeting. They do anyway, but the gestures are different: two men start with a handshake or a fist-bump, pull the other toward him and, with the free hand, pat the other on the back.

On the subject of the huggability quotient being directly proportional to one’s age, let me explain that for a while, after the family’s first grandchild, Stephanie, arrived, I often thought mom got carried away. I’d leave her house on Railroad and she’d want to hug me. “But, Mom, I’m simply walking to the Dairy Queen to buy Steph a cone.”

“No importa.” Mom got her hug. To Mom it didn’t matter that the DQ, is a short block from my childhood home.

Monday’s Journal has an article headlined “Male Teachers Wary Of Hugging Students.” Not surprisingly, it covers many institutional rules proscribing close contact.

In Sacramento, Calif., for example, a kindergarten teacher, Paul Ferreter, says he knows he’s putting his credentials on the line each time he opens his arms to hug one of his students. Many tykes in his classes come from one-parent homes, almost always headed by a single mother.

Surely Ferreter also realizes that teachers — especially males — can have their careers and reputations ruined by the mere accusation of something like “improper touching.” After all, isn’t it easier (not to mention more fun) to believe the worst in someone? Now, teachers in that district respond with a high-five whenever a child appears to want a hug.

An experience we had in 1989 taught me a lesson and made me a believer in hugs. On our regularly scheduled trip to the Grand Canyon with a group of students, the other teacher and I mixed up our assignments and left a high school girl stranded.

Everyone in the group of 25 feared we’d lost the student — literally. Immediately, some of her classmates came up with frightening what-if-ities: “What if she jumped off the canyon walls?” “She was acting depressed this morning,” “The other day she was talking about ending it all.”

There was no shortage of doomsday scenarios. After seven hours of pacing, waiting, talking to rangers, police and university officials, my boss, Ray Newton, and I were beat. That’s when another student, Tamika, approached me with, “You look like you need a hug.” Indeed I did!

Well, we finally located the vanished student and there were hugs, cheers and tears enough to fill the visitors center. Tamika knew the values of a sincere hug, and I appreciate it to this day.