Side hugs.

Observing the world and commenting on its absurdities is one of my favorite past times. Sometimes I just like to sit and watch people and see how they interact. The culture of the university which I attend makes for some even more outrageous situations than the average outrageous interaction. Today's topic of observed absurdity:

The awkward side hug.

This is one of my favorite parts about watching people around campus. I will admit that I've been in my fair share of awkward side hugs. They are great.
I don't usually mind awkward side hugs, except for when the awkwardness is not acknowledged and laughed at. But I would never be the one to initiate a side hug, I always go for the full-frontal hug. (I do not take credit for the hilarity in the title "full-frontal hug")
I have a dear friend of mine, who shall remain nameless (it starts with a K and rhymes with jendra), and she ALWAYS goes for the side hug. Don't worry, I give her a hard time every time this happens.
I can't even explain the side hug. It's just bad news bears.

You see someone on campus that you know, not super well, but you know them enough that you feel obligated to carry on a conversation with them. It could be someone from freshman year who you haven't seen forever, someone you went to high school with, someone you went on a blind date with and had fun but haven't talked to since... there are a lot of these people, you know what I'm talking about.
You are obligated to talk to this person (sometimes you don't want to, sometimes you do; either way you are obligated to). You approach and aren't sure what's going to happen and then BAM, they go for the side hug. There's no avoiding it, there's no going back.
It's like they're saying: "Hey, I don't want to actually hug you, but I feel like I should, so let's just stand side-by-side and only embrace halfway because more physical contact with you than that might make me hurl." Not cool.

You know what makes side hugs even more awkward? Backpacks.
Backpacks really make any form of hugging awkward. It's like: " Oh, hi. I appreciate your presence so I'm going to hug you. Oh no, I just wrapped my arms around you and you were twice as wide as I was expecting. Oh wait, I'm not even hugging you anymore, I feel like I'm hugging your backpack. Cool."

Yeah.