And when something reaches critical mass, there’s really not much else anyone can do about it before the walls start caving in and society crumbles because of it. Such is the case with things like war, terrorism, racial insensitivity, violence, horrific natural disasters and homelessness. These things are all reaching critical mass as I type this, and becoming unwieldy monsters that surprisingly, can’t even hold a flame to one last unbearable thing.

That thing? Finger scratching hand shakers.

Shaking someone’s hand is supposed to be quick and painless. You don’t shake someone’s hand to have a long term touch fest, you shake someone’s hand to give them a polite, quick hello that reeks of professionalism and then be on your happy way. There are people who like to take hand shaking to the next level, where they keep holding onto your hand and looking into your eyes in a collectively uncomfortable and eerie bit of closeness.

But this has nothing on finger scratching hand shakers.

Apparently, somewhere back in the late 80′s, people starting thinking it was funny to shake your hand, and then while they had your hand in their hand, extend one of their fingers into the space between both your then-shaking hands, and scratch the palm of your hand with their finger. Mind you, this all happened inside the shake, so you couldn’t even see it happening or know that it was about to happen. This is one of the reasons why the finger scratching handshake is so horrific.

But that’s not the only reason why finger-scratching hand shaking is so bad.

It’s that there are people out there who think that by shaking your hand and scratching the palm of your hand in the middle of a handshake with their un-manicured scratchy-finger — that they’re either being funny, sexually explicit or just plain groundbreaking. The FSHS’es think that by surprising you with such a startling finger-scratching moment, that you’ll jump back, laugh about it and go on your merry way.

Well I’m here today to say that the prognosis on Finger Scratching Hand Shakers is bad. Really bad.

So the next time you’re preparing to shake someone’s hand and you think that it would be really funny to either: (a) lick your hand before shaking, (b) shake someone’s hand really hard, thereby crushing it, (c) shake too long while urinating your pants, (d)give someone a limp wimpy handshake, or (e) scratch their hand in the mid-shake hidden cup area…

Don’t do it.

Your handshaking friends will thank you for it.