Yesterday, my younger brother graduated the fire academy, and the graduation was kinda long. Not from the usually suspects though, most times it is a speaker or speakers go on and on, they have a ton of people to graduate, or the fact that they have so many parts to the ceremony. But, neither one was the culprit, it was the HANDSHAKES. So there were 43 people that graduated, and they were broken up to 11 groups. Each group was called up and one by one they got their badges. This is were it all went crazy long. Their were between 21 and 22 people on stage, as one guy kept rotating on and off, and each person was a superior and demanded a handshake. Even the announcer would come of the podium to give a handshake and back up again. In total there were at least 946 handshakes on the stage, and then each person from a engine group shook the hands of each other so on average 6 hand shakes per group so another 66, puts us at 1112. I also did not count the 88 handshakes that all the superiors gave each other. There was a lot of hand sanitizer needed.
