You know what I suddenly decided I don’t like for some reason?
That thing where you give someone a high five and you kind of miss and they make you do it again until you get it right. Because what are we, like training for something?
“Let’s try that high five again.” No. Why? Let’s not. We did the high five — transaction complete — I don’t care if it wasn’t “good enough” for you.
“Ohh, that sucked, we gotta do that over.” No, we don’t! We are adults! Why must we pin our worth as human beings on our ability to give a decent high five? Instead I’ll just give you the benefit of the doubt that you’re usually better. Can’t you just do the same for me and we can segue into the non-high-five portion of our conversation? Yo, guy, we failed at the high five. It’s okay, we can move on as people. We both have plenty of other good qualities I’m sure. One bad high five does not herald the crumbling of our relationship that you seemingly believe it does.
“But if we lead with a bad high five, then the whole thing starts off on a funky note.” OH, OKAY, I DIDN’T REALIZE YOU WERE GOING TO BE A FUCKING BABY ABOUT IT. So why don’t we now, instead of just, I don’t know, living life forward as humankind is meant to do, let’s take a moment to act like we’re caught in some bizarre time loop and repeatedly bang our hands together like a couple of monkeys stumbling through a game of “Say Say Oh Playmate”?
Hey. Listen. Let’s get real here. Just because you think an imperfect high five is like some kind of medieval hex doesn’t mean I have to indulge your creeping O.C.D. Maybe I have kind of bad hand-eye coordination. You know what, NOT THE END OF THE WORLD AS IT TURNS OUT. We don’t need to stop everything until we get it right, Mama Rose. There are things worth being a perfectionist about but let’s just take one moment to prioritize. If this country took all the energy we expended redoing inadequate high fives and funneled that into something productive, we could get so much shit done.
LOOK. I’M SORRY MY MOTOR SKILLS AREN’T GOOD ENOUGH FOR YOU, YOUR MAJESTY. But we can’t take back the shitty high five. It happened. It’s done. Now we have a choice. Are we going to move forward, or are we going to live lives fueled by regret, constantly scrambling backward into the past? I SAY LET’S MOVE FORWARD.
