O.k., this is probably really trivial, but.....
I met a buddy's visiting cousin yesterday when I dropped off some hamburgers for his boxer, Cleo, that I brought from Fudruckers, that weren't cooked as ordered (good manager there - his new cook failed twice and he gave me a box for the burgers, refunded my money and the cook finally got it right the third time - but I digress).
Cleo was enthused to say the least and pretty much occupied all our attention while my bud demonstrated how Cleo was so well behaved as she waited for him to feed her a burger.
Anyway, his cuz is a burly young dude into football, hunting and fishing (Louisiana boy). When Cleo finished wolfing down her burger my bud introduced us and we shook hands.
Damn! When I grab a dead fish I just wanna recoil and spin in circles shaking my hand in disgust to try to make the feeling go away!
Of course, ya can't politely do that. Point is, my positive first impression of his cuz, a perfectly nice guy, was instantly tainted by shaking hands with him. This has happened to me numerous times in my life and I always get that feeling. Truth is, when I'm about to shake someone's hand the first time I'm consciously hoping they have a decently firm grip.
I know I'm not alone in experiencing this; I didn't coin the old "dead fish" phrase.
Do you guys feel the same way? I just Googled this,
http://research.ua.edu/archive2001/handshakes.html and found it interesting.
"Having a firm handshake is important for making a good impression," Chaplin said. "We found that men had firmer handshakes than women did, on average, but we also found that women who had firm handshakes tended to be evaluated as positively as men are. We thought this finding was interesting because often when women have characteristics that are more similar to men, they tend to elicit a somewhat more negative evaluation — simply because it's counter to the usual stereotypes."