Trust An Expert — You’re Clapping For Our Essential Health Workers Wrong
As someone who has done a whole lot of clapping, I can tell you that these scheduled rounds of applause for our essential health workers, however well-meaning, are an embarrassment to the craft. In fact, the entire body of the World Clappers Association is watching what you’re doing with horror, then hiding their faces in their mildly inflamed hands.
Let me assure you that I have no small amount of clapping experience, and have made it my business to learn the intricacies of the discipline, from applauding community theatre performances of Hello, Dolly! to solo clapping kindly parking wardens as they usher little old ladies across the street. I have corrected entire churchloads of Gospel worshippers, and am known in my circles for sparking off that famous round of applause after they pulled that young lad out of the manhole. I am therefore in the privileged position of being able to provide some helpful guidance on the matter at hand, so to speak.
Clapping, it turns out, is a lot like speaking Mandarin, where the slightest error of tone or inflection can as good as reverse your meaning. Get the timbre of your clap a tiny bit wrong, point the fingers in slightly the wrong direction, thrust out the chest a little too much, and you may as well just stamp on the head of the person you’re trying to…
