Why the age of casual hugging could be over

I know that when it's safe, I'm going to be an enthusiastic hugger again. But I'll first be asking if it's OK

When I was 17, during a confessional campfire round-robin on a school trip, a teaching aide made a striking admission. I don't know when it suddenly became the thing to hug all of your friends, but I don't really like hugging," I remember her saying.

This eminently reasonable personal preference surprised me. In the mid-late aughts of my western Canadian adolescence, social hugging was so ubiquitous that it never occurred to me to question the practice. I hugged people frequently throughout my youth: my family, my schoolmates, the kindly lady who taught me piano.