K is for Kissing with confidence.
Who remembers this tune? If you do, I love you just for being my vintage and, I recommend that you play it while you read this post.
As part of what might become a series of posts that could be entitled ‘tiny little niggles about living in Spain that are really too small to mention when you consider all the sunshine’, I have identified another little problem with living here in sunny Spain. And I wonder if anyone else feels the same.
The problem is the kissing. Kissing etiquette to be more precise. Who to kiss, when to kiss them and how? Simple questions. The thing here in Spain it is similar to France, I think. You greet your friends, and new acquaintances, with a kiss on both cheeks. And I am not saying that I can’t kiss or that my kisses are no good (that would be social suicide, right?), just that they lack consistency.
So, here are the salient issues or questions:
- The people that I kiss to greet and say adios to at social occasions, do I also kiss them in the street? What, even if I haven’t brushed my teeth and I am just dropping Bibsey off at guardaría?
- If I am leaving a party because my child is just about to have/is having a meltdown do I go round and say goodbye to everyone individually and kiss them?
- What about teenage boys? Have I got to kiss them? I thought all of that was behind me.
- Do I kiss strangers, who are friends of friends?
- And what am I to do when I keep on bumping into the same person in town and I have already kissed them once?
- What about when I just don’t fucking feel like it?
- Am I terribly English?
It feels a bit like: I have un besito para ti, pero no para ti that’s a kiss for you, but not for you. I feel like I may confuse people because sometimes I do and sometimes I don’t. My Dad, an incorrigible francophile, would know just what to do. His approach is to take people by both their shoulders, thus announcing his kissing intentions, and to take control of the greeting. Me, not.
Sometimes, it all feels so right, but often so wrong. I am more of a hug and a kiss on one cheek kind of girl. I like the body contact with my friends. I like to grab them and hug them.
What do you do? And what should I do? I want to comply, but sometimes I just won’t physically let myself. I am, as of every day this month, blogging my way through the alphabet with the help of some friends. But please don’t expect me to kiss them (all).
