Hands are Fascinating

Last updated on April 12, 2020

I find hands fascinating. Do you have short fingers or long ones? What color are your palms? What’s your grip strength? Do you have calluses? How do you fingernails grow? What do you wear on your hands and do they stay on the right way? Do you have nicks and scrapes from cooking, gardening, home improvement? Do you have tattoos? I could go on with the questions. Perhaps my interest has come through by now.

I noticed myself observing hands in my first year of university and I’ve continued to notice them. When I meet you, I’ll probably pay attention to your hands at some point. Is that weird? quirky? Maybe, but that’s alright with me.

I’m a bit jealous of people with strong hands that can hold their body weight while hanging from a rig, hands that facilitate a pullup and fancy gymnastic moves. Every time I hang from a rig, I wonder how to develop my grip strength so that I can hold on longer without feeling pain. I think that maybe it’s a good idea to practice a dead hang more often. But my calluses never seem to offer enough protection.

Looking at my hands now, they are relatively smooth. I haven’t been on a rig in over 6 weeks (holidays followed by physical isolating in the time of coronavirus). At this point, it would take all of 20 seconds for me to feel the pain if I were to hang from a rig today. I don’t know when I’ll be on a rig again; it’s hard to worry about my grip strength now.

Thank You Hands

My hands work well with my arms and the rest of my body for all sorts of activities: lifting light and heavy things, moving things, preparing meals, eating, touching, working, typing this post. Their list of tasks is reduced in the time of physical distancing, but keep busy. It’s quite alright that they struggle on a rig; they do so much more as I live my life every day.

As a bonus, here’s an idiom. As my sister helped me clean my apartment last weekend, I remembered:

Many hands make light work.

During April, I’m participating in the writing prompts challenge from WordPress.com. Want to participate? Find the prompts here.