I have to confess one of my guilty pleasures – and there are too many – is Survivor which finished, more or less, yesterday.

It was mostly an unremarkable ending as predictable as the last episode of Friends. My favorite bit was at the end of Tom's performance at Tribal Council where he walks up to Boston Rob and says no hard feelings in a very suspicious way and looks like he might either hug Rob or kill him, and extends his hand to the seated Rob. Rob, of course, attempts to shake his hand.

Angry but satisfied and making a very smug face, Tom says, "Don't be stupid, stupid." I laughed. God I laughed. I laughed for like 15 minutes. I'm still chortling now. I'm not even sure why it's so funny. It was horribly cheap. And I don't even think that Rob deserved it exactly. That wasn't why it was funny. It wouldn't have been as funny if it had been anybody other than Tom. But the whole thing, Tom speaking, the denied handshake was so choreographed and awkward. Tom lasted a long time on the show but this performance of his was more planned than anything Tom had done so far. And I think he had to have been a little proud of himself that he had managed to carry off his performance so well. "Don't be stupid, stupid." I love that.

Handshakes are odd things anyway. I was dead set against them until they became unavoidable. They involve so many nuances. Mostly light with a woman. Firmer with a man because a handshake between men counts so much. But I almost always get it wrong. I once had a job interview and I shook the man's hand when I met him. Too firm I think. Because he winced a little and made an unhappy face. I later found out that he had the flu. I don't think I was too strong. I didn't get that job. Don't be stupid, stupid.

And sometimes when you go in for that handshake, and your hands miss a little, that's really awkward. Each participant as likely to blame the other rather than themselves. And sometimes, you meet someone younger, and they go in for some sort of secret handshake of youth and of course I fail miserably at that and feel excluded from the Club of the Young because I don't know their secret handshake. And speaking of that, there are far too many kinds. There's the business standard. Palm in palm with thumbs overlapping. There's the manly variant. Thumbs interlocked on top with palms on the other wrist. There's the double-handed variant which is almost never elegant. I like you enough to shake both your hands but I'm still not going to hug you. And there's the handshake-hug. This is difficult to work out because it's a social risk and you don't want to be the first to go in for that hug if the other is unwilling. And then there's the floundering version of the handshake-hug where one person goes for a hug and the other goes for a handshake and it's just a horrible collision of misunderstood intentions. Don't do this at a job interview. In particular if you have the flu. There's the political handshake also known, in bulk, as glad-handing which is a very fun word.

As far as I know nobody has identified with any validity the origin of the handshake. It has been cited that the handshake might come from Medieval Europe where knights would extend their hands to each other as a demonstration that they meant no ill and had no weapons. It's also a matter of record that the ancient Greeks did the same.

Perhaps that means – Tom refusing to shake Rob's hand after all – that Tom was concealing a weapon.

SS