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From: purtell@reed.UUCP (Lady Godiva)
Newsgroups: net.singles
Subject: Re: yeah! what this person said!
Message-ID: <1742@reed.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 29-Jul-85 14:57:55 EDT
Article-I.D.: reed.1742
Posted: Mon Jul 29 14:57:55 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 31-Jul-85 20:07:49 EDT
References: <735@lll-crg.ARPA>
Reply-To: purtell@reed.UUCP (Lady Godiva)
Distribution: net
Organization: Reed College, Portland, Oregon
Lines: 53
Summary: 

In article <735@lll-crg.ARPA> bandy@lll-crg.ARPA (Andrew Scott Beals) writes:

>My sentiments exactly, unnamed personobject... Babble babble babble all you
>want about Hugs and whatnot and you'll never get anywhere. Making special
>situations for things that should be spontaneous is silly.
>
>If you all were serious about these things (methinks that if you all met
>in person, everyone would go autistic and not say anything to one another
>until just before y'all left - who knows, you might actually COMMUNICATE!),
>you would buy tickets to go to someplace convienent (Newark springs to mind
>(or O'Hare)) and MEET each other and act out all these huggy-cuddly warm-fuzzy
>fantasies that you're having about each other.

  *sigh* Ok. Let's sort a few things out here. I can't speak for
everyone who has participated in the hug discussion, but I can tell you
where I'm coming from. 
   First of all, I agree in a way with the statement about making
special situations for things that should be spontaneous. On the other 
hand I don't think that we were doing that at all. Saying that we wanted
a "hug party" (I assume that's what you were refering to) just means
that there are a bunch of us on the net who feel the same way and we
wish that we could get together and express it. I wouldn't want to spend
an evening with a bunch of people I had never met before just hugging.
Of course I would want to talk and get to know everyone. I mentioned the
party that I had with some friends of mine here recently and refered to
it as a hug party. I've had several other nights like that with these
people since then, and all of them were certainly far more than all of
us just standing around and hugging each other. We had fun, talked,
played games, drank, and shared things. It was anything but a
huggy-cuddly warm-fuzzy fantasy.
    Second, it seems to me that you are reducing the value of a hug to
something on the order of sentimental, cutesy or childish. At the risk
of sounding like an idealistic flower-child or an aspiring second-rate
poet, I think that hugs are very necessary and important. People need
that kind of physical contact. I don't mean just a quick hug like you
were afraid that the two of you might become joined at the chest if you
actually got that close for more than two seconds, I mean really holding
someone tightly. People need to be loved and accepted like that. I've
known all kinds of people: Christians, college students, street kids (I
was there once myself), very poor, very rich, very accomplished, etc.
etc. and I've never found a group of people under any circumstances, who
didn't need that kind of thing. Including me. If you still think that
I'm being silly, or having "huggy-cuddly warm-fuzzy fantasies" about
people on the net (believe me - not only do my fantasies not include
people on the net but they are anything but "huggy-cuddly warm fuzzy")
then either I have still expressed myself badly, or we just have very
different opinions about this.

   cheers -

   elizabeth g. purtell

   (Lady Godiva)