Daniel Cucher

Every so often, asinine behavior arises out of social convention and needs to be put down before it gets out of hand. Such is the case with the fist hit.

Two guys, Dick and Ronnie, haven't seen each other in a few days. They meet up on the UA Mall and vigorously shake hands. Ronnie withdraws from the handshake, clenches his hand into a fist and holds it out in front of him like he's waiting for a falcon to swoop down and perch. Dick balls his hand into a fist and rams it into Ronnie's fist.

This is the fist hit. It punctuates too many handshakes, and it needs to be stopped.

Before we can put an end to this phenomenon ÷ at the very least because it makes us meatheads ÷ we need to understand its context in the evolution of the handshake.

About 1,500 years ago in medieval Europe, the handshake emerged as a peaceful alternative to stabbing someone in the neck with a concealed dagger. In humanitarian terms, this was progress.

Picture two medieval men stumbling up to each other between mead halls at night. They come from different clans and should, according to social decorum, want to savagely tear each other to bits. But having lost hundreds of clansmen in the past few weeks to vicious dragons, they're not feeling their usual bloodthirsty selves. One man holds out his open hands to declare, "I'm not packing heat." The other man, suspicious but weary, holds up his hands: "Say, how's the mead on your side of the forest?" The men converse about mead connoisseurship and unifying forces against dragons, which signals them to unite physically by joining hands.

As time passed and Europe became more civilized, the gesture turned from meaning, "I'm not going to carry on this hapless blood feud and slay you," to, "Ah, my good friend Gerald the moat-cleaner. So nice to see you've survived the plague."

In more recent history, the hand-slap diverged from the handshake, spawning mutations like the high-five, the windmill-double-slap and any number of combos involving shakes, slaps and finger snaps.

Within the last decade, a different breed of hand-slap ÷ perhaps centuries old, but confined to certain circles ÷ starting spreading like a summer wildfire, such that one can hardly embrace another's hand today without expecting a fist hit.

However, like last summer's wildfires, the fist hit is not too overwhelming to defeat. In fact, the fist hit may even be partially contained west of the Mississippi. According to one UA student, who requested anonymity for fear of publicly challenging social convention, "When I moved from out East, I looked at people who held their fists up like they were freaks. Now when I go to back to the east (coast) I hold up my fist and people look at me like I'm a freak." Rightfully so. Imagine if he took the fist hit to the Far East, where people bow to say hello.

But perhaps the fist hit doesn't makes us "freaks" as much as it declares us belligerently masculine. Patti Harada, an adjunct instructor from the UA psychology department, thinks the fist hit is a way for men to express affection for other men, while also asserting their manliness. "Men are being socially indoctrinated with softer, more feminine ideals of companionship and socialization," she says. "They're getting it from their '60s and '70s mothers. But they're still carrying high levels of testosterone in the blood."

Men want to embrace each other, but they're simply not comfortable with it. So we have to hit each other. The same is true with hugging, says Harada. While most women may calmly embrace, most men slap each other's back when they hug. It's okay for men to touch, as long as it's just a little bit violent.

This doesn't mean that men consciously consider their masculinity when embracing each other. Like many social behaviors, the fist hit has simply become standard practice: We automatically shake hands and/or punch each other's fists. We do it because it's expected. It's hip. But it's a step back to those days of yore when men brandished maces and tortured each other with thumbscrews.

Even as a social norm devoid of its psychological roots, the fist hit is obviously combative and stylistically lame.

Refuse the fist hit. Answer it with a blank stare. Let's not be a society who relates, especially to our friends, with closed fists. It's a metaphorical nightmare.

Plus, as I said, it's lame and the Chinese will laugh at us.