In honor of the day

The Hotheaded Naked Ice Borer. I loved that Discover magazine article when it first appeared, though I did feel terribly sorry for the penguins.

Oh well, thanks to trade winds, we lost a day somewhere and it's really April 2. (Or, judging from the date on the "new" article, we lost a year.)

Science is fun.

Watch the woman's hands

"Additionally, Dr. ----- reports that Ms. ----- only has 10% use of her hands, fingers, and arms for grasping, turning, or twisting objects, fine manipulations, or reaching."

The sentence struck me as absurd. Granting that the words were written as part of a process of appealing for disabilty benefits, I couldn't help wondering if someone had misunderstood something somehow. Ten percent use of these hands, these arms? I looked at them, flexing my fingers. The skin's dry, opening in small cracks on two of the knuckles. Blue veins run over muscles you can watch working along the arm as the fingers move. These are not hands you'd see in an advertisement for moisturizer or dishwashing soap. Still, they're not what you'd expect from the sentence above. At least, they're not what I would expect.

Thinking of the reasons why I never got a job after graduating from the training school a couple years ago, my hands are nowhere near the top of my list. They type 80 words per minute, for Pete's sake!--faster if I've been practicing. All right, I knew that my manual dexterity tested below the fifth percentile. And it's long been obvious that I'm not someone you'd want flipping burgers at your favorite fast-food joint, carrying fragile objects, using needle and thread on anything you wouldn't want stained by my blood, or performing surgery. As for upper-body strength, it's not much, never has been. Opening a fresh jar of my favorite salsa is an exercise in absurdity that can take longer than anything else I do in the kitchen. Reaching my arms up and lifting are actions with unpredictable results. But something about that number, 10 percent, leaves me struggling to make sense of it. It sounds like I should be someone who can't tie her shoes in the morning or unlock the front door. I don't get it.

I look at my hands again, asking them what they make of all this. They tell me they want to give someone a backrub. Not quite the answer I was looking for.