Joe Barry reported the following: "I just saw a report on CBS' Sunday Morning show about a hand model. You would appreciate the fact that a hand model doesn't use her hands!
She walks around with elbow length gloves and both hands held up like a surgeon who has just scrubbed. Her husband does all the cooking and housework and her kids buckle her shoes. I was reminded of patients I've had with RSD (reflex sympathetic dystrophy - now known as CRRPS: complex regional pain syndrome.) for whom any touch is painful and even a breeze across the skin can be excruciating.
What a tragedy. Someone who makes her living with her hands doesn't use her hands!"
You can read this weird tale on the CBS website Here! Or if you are interested in hands that actually do stuff, stay tuned to this blog, or better yet, put your own to work and watch the action first hand and close-up.
I was just thinking Saturday how nice it would be to have perfectly manicured hands, with painted nails. But then I think of all the things I did in just one week that would compromise those glossy fingertips: digging in the dirt, planting and weeding my flower beds, painting my walls a fresh color, and getting a lot of paint on my hands at the same time, beading and stringing together a new book project for which long nails would have been in the way. I think I'll stick with my plain jane hands. They are serving me well as they are. And as a friend of mine has had terrible arthritis in her hands, I can appreciate that my hands might not always be so able to do the things I love.
ReplyDeleteWe have a distorted sense of beauty that negates the value of work and service and promotes idleness and self-indulgence.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, Joe's comments made me realize that I am a hand model of a different sort.
I don't get paid the big bucks, and since I take the photos myself, I don't have anyone to rave about the emotions my hands express.
But as a hand model, I have the opportunity to engage others in working with their own hands, making their lives richer and more meaningful. And best of all, I don't have to wear gloves.