I’ve never had calluses on my hands before,
most likely because I’ve never done anything that required strenuous physical labor before.
I mean, I still haven’t but after this hand, foot, and mouth disease, my hands got all blistered and dry and cracked and they feel really, really rough.
I read something once about a person who judged others based completely on the appearances of their hands. Of course, as biased humans who like to think their presumptions are correct no matter what, it was less of a “your nails are painted nicely, you must be a dainty little person” type of scenario and more of a “I don’t like you and you have dirt under your nails so this confirms my suspicions. You’re dirty and careless and I care not to mingle with this riff-raff” kind of thing.
Because evidently, telling people off based primarily on silent judgments means your inner sheltered fifties mom comes out.
People are always forming their opinions and then finding information to back that up second. They’re often lucky if they can even figure out why they feel the way they do about something.
If someone were to look at my hands now, they’d see short, bitten nails, callused fingertips, and scars left behind from anxiously picking at warts that have since disappeared probably as much as they’re ever going to.
My friends used to joke that if I were a superhero, I’d probably be stuck with the power of healing incredibly slowly. One, because that is an ability I naturally possess which would only be strengthened by radioactivity or cocaine or whatever else managed to get me into this hypothetical situation and two, because it would be just my luck to get some kind of useless superhuman capabilities while other people are zooming around with their aerodynamic ears and spitting fireballs.
Apparently, Mario and Dumbo were superheroes to me.
Basically, my hands spell out that of a nervous, anxious, emotional person.
But they’re forming calluses now.
They’re learning how to be tougher, firmer, stronger.
And it’ll be thoughts like these with unnecessary metaphors I’ll think of while brushing my teeth in the morning. As I spit out a wad (that was about the grossest word I could come up with and admit it, that is clearly a gross activity) of toothpaste into the sink and mull over that for a little bit, it’s something that I’ll carry with me in my pocket to take out when I need to smile.
I was once frail and delicate but I’m coming off a gross childhood disease — which I also had a pretty intense metaphor for; I ended up with a kid virus because I was never exposed to it when I was of age, meaning I now had to deal with the consequences of missing out on things when I had the proper chance (this is why people don’t let me speak for long periods of time, I just keep making ridiculous allegories) — and I’m gonna get tougher.
Or my hands are just going to look really gross with all these little white bulges and shaking my hand when I meet people is going to become an activity not many want to partake in.
You’ll learn to get over it.
