A Hug Is Still a Hug

If you are a student at the Shepherd Junior High School in Mesa Arizona, you had better be careful how you hug another student. The new rule is that any hug must take less than two seconds.  Otherwise the student gets a detention or worse.  This is no doubt another attempt by an American School struggling to deal with the most prominent and heinous dangers facing the schools, namely drugs, violence, and affection. 

Although some students say that this two-second rule will cause undue stress, I do see some benefit here, a silver lining in the cloud.  It could very well challenge the students, like an athletic event.

In order to make sure they do not exceed the two seconds, the students will have to get involved in intensive training:

“Hey Jordan, do you want to come to a movie?”

“No, Willy, not today. I have to practice my hugging.”

I can see some students hiring affection coaches to work with them to ensure they stay within the small window of opportunity.  At the end of a three hour session, the coach may say, “Sorry Megan, you’re not ready to hug at school yet; the best you did today was 2.478 seconds.”

In fact all of this may even lead to the school conducting competitive events to see who can complete the quickest hugs.  Which parent would not be proud to see his or her kid come home wearing a gold medal for the fastest hug? 

Needless to say some kids might start to cheat and take performance enhancing drugs to make them hug faster.  The school would no doubt handle these contenders by subjecting them to urine testing if they hug too fast. There are rotten apples in every barrel.

Shepherd Junior High may be onto something here.  We may soon see the greatest athletic achievement since the four-minute mile.  This is just what American schools need these days; the two-second hug.