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Why do we slap each other when we’re friends?

By Ed Goldman

A motivational speaker named Mel Robbins says that if you high-five yourself in the mirror each morning you’ll have a good day—and, as a bonus, subsequent days will be pretty terrific.

While she doesn’t mention it, I’m concerned that if I were to high-five myself in the mirror while still groggy (or hung-over) I might accidentally crack the glass and incur not only a hand hemorrhage but seven years of bad luck. To recap, this would provide me with neither a good day nor subsequent terrific days.

She also recommends high-fiving others throughout the day, as well. But if you start the day high-fiving yourself in a mirror, isn’t it possible you’ll keep looking for people who strongly resemble you with whom to do that pay-it forward high-five, thereby ignoring so many deserving handfuls of fingers? 

I’m also curious how HR people would deal with complaints they might receive from unwitting high-five recipients. Would they consider the gesture to be a form of harassment? Bullying? Unwanted camaraderie? If I worked with or for someone who went around high-fiving all of us every morning, I’m sure I’d be on my guard. I’d maybe even wear two catcher’s mitts to work. Or at least protective mittens.

I always found there was enough to be worried about in the office without it including spontaneous, unrequested high-fives. The daily dangers included catching the flu from someone separated from me by only a five-foot-high partition (meaning, if the co-worker stood up while sneezing, I’d be a goner). Or being asked to buy a gigantic candy bar for someone’s kid, whose school was having a fund drive to raise enough money to buy giant candy bars for babies in Biafra. (Since Biafra has been Nigeria for 55 years or so, someone should double-check the school’s geography test scores.)

When I had real jobs, I found it difficult to enjoy reading newspapers at my desk, fearing my boss would suddenly burst in and castigate me for keeping up with current events during work hours. Since my job titles were Public Information Officer or Director of Community Affairs, I could always claim that reading newspapers and magazines (but maybe not comic books) fit neatly into that segment of my job description, “Other duties as assigned.”

Ironically, during the four times in my life when I worked full-time as a reporter or editor, I was expected to read other publications at my desk, to be informed and also to see how much better the competition covered a story I’d just done. But I digress.

After listening to one of Mel Robbins’s lectures on high-fiving, I decided to click around to see if the concept appears elsewhere, perhaps in another form.