100 Pictures Challenge #27: Foreign.

I have crooked, hypermobile fingers. That is to say, all of my digits (excluding my right thumb) automatically collapse backward at the proximal interphalangeal joint - or, in the case of my left thumb, at the carpometacarpal joint (ie. where the thumb meets the rest of the hand).

Because it's not exactly a common thing (and far less common for so many digits to be hypermobile), most people I know tend to treat my hands as some kind of freakish, foreign, alien object. Four out of five people will shrink back in revulsion and horror when I do my Broken Fingers routine, or do the Wriggling Worm act. One out of five will be morbidly fascinated and insist on grabbing my hand and poking my joints - and then scream or make similar noises of shock as they feel my joints give way underneath their fingers. About 4.5 out of five think I'm some sort of mutated freak with deformed hands.

Well hey, you know, *I* don't think of it as a crippling malformation. Okay, sure, my fingers have a nasty tendency to get jammed when I play really fast pieces on the piano and they come down wrong, but other than that, the hypermobility isn't a handicap of any sort; in fact, it can actually come in quite handy - in that I can pull off weird feats on the piano that straight-fingered folks can't. And they can do about everything else yours can do. So quit treating me like a freak of some sort already.


(And yeah, this was an excuse to practice drawing hands - which I can't do to save my life).