Be thankful for two hands

One of those “you better appreciate it until it’s gone” kind of a deal here. I two weeks ago cut open my right hand knuckle down to the bone and had to sew it. During this healing period I’ve been single handed, and it sucks. Unless you’re already single handed, consider the luxury you have right now of not lacking a hand.

I’ve been single handed before due to injuries, with my history of fracturing my arm at 4 different times, but at those times it was easier to cope as I was both much younger, had less responsibilities, and fewer hobbies.

This injury I have right now is terribly tedious because I pretty much just got a band-aid and have full mobility except the index finger. I could rip up the stitches but the big worry is because I did damage my tendon for my index finger and if I use it too much I danger snapping it, leading to a much longer healing time span.

But let’s get into it, here’s the reason I think you should take a moment and worship your hand a little, as you never know when you are going to get hurt:

The big stuff

  1. Driving a car. It is possible to change gears with a disabled hand, but it’s not easy. I may have been quite a reckless driver the last weeks due to me being too stupid to realize I should take the local transit instead of dangering everyone else on the road.

  2. Making food. Yeah, good luck cutting up vegetables or ingredients. You’re a piece of shit if you only cook food you don’t have to prepare. And no, I don’t care to explain.

  3. Eating food. Knife and fork? Haha you’re fun! Soup? Yeah that get’s boring fast. Pizza? I mean you can just cut it up with a scissor right? If you’re me then with a dishing machine now I’m stuck with a nasty dirty scissor. Thanks for the suggestion though.

  4. Typing on a keyboard. My brilliant mind still haven’t swiched from my Das Keyboard 4 Ultimate which lacks keyboard character symbols; like it’s all blank keys. Fun gimmick that doesn’t obstruct much when you’re fluent on the keyboard anyway. But your left hand is only fluent with the left half of the keys. Me and my coworkers did a writing test the other day on some website. They landed at around 80-90 words/min. I landed at 18 words/min… It’s driving me nuts. You can’t imagine how many times I lose my train of though while coding because I made some stupid typo and it takes ages to navigate with vim bindings with the left hand. Got damnit this fuuuing sucks

Medium annoying basic tasks

  1. Popping zits. Basically impossible. Spent 15 minutes to pop 1 zit, and still got most junk under the skin left. Impossible I tell you.

  2. Shaving. Not the face. Face is simple, even with my left hand. But let me tell you how pleased I was when I shaved my right armpit with my non-disabled left hand, got some good result, and then realized how fckn difficult it is to shave the left armpit with the left hand. Looks like I accidentally tried to shave it.

  3. Wiping yo ass. With my secondary hand? Yea I’m gonna be honest and say it was a bit misscolored after my first wipe. I missed a little. It’s hard OK?!

  4. Obviously, doing that adult thing. You know what I’m talking about? What could a single man occupy himself from time to time to make himself feel good? Yea, that thing.

  5. Hand writing. Can rely on PC or phone to render perfect text for me, but every now and then you send a birthday gift and make a nice card and oops right you can’t foqing write with your right hand. OK well that squibble is unreadable now, but I guess they can just assume the horrendously packaged present with the writing worse than a disabled 3 year old with tourettes is coming from me, I mean it’s not that much better than usual anyway.

  6. Oh yea and almost forgot: Masturbation, ofc! Yea that has been a hell with the left hand. Forget that other obvious thing I was talking about. LOL

Inconveniences

  1. Putting on clothes. You can’t start feeling more useless until you notice that you can’t put on your own clothes correctly. Seriously thinking “I can’t tie these shoes” with a big fat sad face on your face. Sucks.

Moral of the story

Just be fackn grateful for your two hands yo. Give ‘em a kiss each and dream good dreams about them tonight.

(Photo by Luis Quintero)