Digits

I bend down and tie my shoes, a rare thing.  I usually just shove the shoe right on without even untying it.  I use my left index finger as a shoehorn while the right hand pulls up the tongue.  Then, I jam my foot inside.  It only hurts sometimes.  Next shoe.  Switch hands.  Then, I throw on my coat and zip it up.  I head out of the room, open the door and venture out.  The day begins.

The day first started with me smacking the snooze button on my alarm clock.  Sometimes it’s just out of reach of my short little fingers and I have to swing at it again before it wakes up anyone else.  My hands only hurt temporarily when I miss and hit the wire rack below.

The night before, I spent hours typing assignments and chatting online, my fingers working away much like they are now.  I don’t know how they do it or why.  My brain tells them to do it and they only get a few things wrong.  Even as I sit here typing this, I marvel at the speed at which my brain tells each individual finger to find its own individual letter and push down the key.  Wow.  How strange.  I think I just typed that in thirty seconds.  Now that’s fast.  Fingers are fascinating things.

I opened up these thoughts to one of my cousins, asking her what she thought about fingers.  She immediately thought about life without them and the things she wouldn’t be able to do.  Play piano, draw, write, use the computer.  A devoted pianist, computer freak and locksmith of sorts, she needs her hands.  Obviously.

She contemplated how weird fingers looked.  Hers are short and stubby, with short fingernails so she can better play her music.  “But man, I’d take music over nails any day,” she writes.

Fingers, simple little tools that perform so many things, and really aren’t that simple at all.  There are three bones called phalanges: distal, middle, and proximal.  The thumb doesn’t have a middle phalanx.  There are joints, fat deposits, flexion points, tendons, and blood vessels.  All these things allow for the different movements.  Bend.  Straighten.  Side-to-side.

I watch my hands as I type this paragraph.  They bounce back and forth as I delete and fix my mistakes.  Sometimes the fingers get it wrong.  But that’s OK.  They work hard.  Index bounces to the Y.  Middle finger bounces to the delete.  I never did listen in keyboarding class.  I always moved my entire hand to hit delete.  Numbers too.  I could never match up the correct finger to the number it was supposed to hit.  I kind of hate that.  It takes much longer to hit the key and reposition when you move your entire hand.  Oh well.  Now I use my fingers to navigate the arrow using my computer’s track pad.  Hover the arrow over post.  One click and it will be done.  Marvelous.

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