The Story of CrookedFingers

"It's a long story...worth telling."

Alright, then let's tell that story!

The entire tagline of this project's name was for it to reference a subject to talk about, and discussion and explanation are the elements of this blog that I aimed to promote.  "CrookedFingers", though condensed to one word for stylistic reasons, is obviously to be interpreted as "crooked fingers."  This little story takes me back to English class last year, at the end of my first semester of grade 11...

We were in class working on symposiums, which were essentially to be our final projects for the class.  Everyone in the room was working diligently, and aside from a bit of side conversation, it was a pretty quiet class.  My symposium topic was to explain the aspects of blogging online (ironic, no?), but that's not a very important detail.  What is important is what happens to me while I decide to take a break.

It's just a quick break, all right? Five more minutes...

The classroom portion of the project required each student to make up note cards as the backbone of the actual writing process for our symposium paper.  As I wrote on each individual note card, I was noticing that my hands were smudging; on top of being an overall sloppy writer, I'm also left-handed, so my left hand tends to smudge from the graphite or ink as I write.  So I'm writing and everything was dandy thus far, but on that particular day I just wasn't in the mood to throw in 100 per cent.  We all know those moods we get in when we're trying to work – sometimes we're well-oiled machines that can breeze through work.  But then there are other times (a majority of the time, no less) when the idea of work is such a stretch that day and nothing can get done.  We've all been there.

So I decided to set my pencil down for a couple minutes to give my lack of motivation a bit of a break.  However, I'm also a very fidgety person, so I tried to make it look like I was doing something.  I looked down at my hands and, as I expected by that point in the class, both of my pinkie fingers were smothered and stained with graphite.  Naturally I could've went to the washroom to get it all off my hands, but any southpaw like me knows smudgy hands occur too often to bother doing that. I did what any lefty would do in that situation, and forcefully rubbed away the graphite with my thumb.

I need to learn how to write like this.

I started with my left hand, which was far more smudged and dirty than the other hand.  As I always do, I rubbed away the mess without a problem in the world.  Once the stringy remnants of the graphite were on my thumb and palm, I patted and wiped my hands clean – a clean left hand was looking good as new!  The only thing left to do to complete my mission was to turn my attention to the other hand – a slightly less but still apparently graphite-clad right hand.  As a quick disclaimer: no, I have no idea how I manage to get both hands dirty when I'm writing on paper.

I started rubbing out and cleaning the side of my right hand, just between the real mess at the pinkie and my wrist, holding my hand still by wrapping my index and middle finger around my pinkie for support.  As I left the side sparkling, I moved up toward the pinkie to get started cleaning the part that's always the dirtiest.  Keeping my other two fingers wrapped to hold my pinkie still, I began to push my thumb against it and rub out the mess.  It was at that moment that, to this day, my right hand would never be the same.

The bane of the southpaw's existence.

Looking absentmindedly around the room as I cleaned my hands off, I felt and heard a crack; a fastening coming undone.  Something that was tightly knit to function had been affected.  I looked down at my hand to see that the whole top half of my pinkie finger had gone crooked.  I looked down in horror at my hand: nothing hurt and I could move my hand like normal, but if you took the time to look at my hand, it all looked crooked just because of the one finger going off-centre.  Once I decided to look up from my odd "injury," my eyes met my teacher's, who asked if there was anything wrong.  I couldn't answer, because I didn't even know – was this damaging to my hand?  Should I see a doctor?  What just happened?  Was my teacher asking that rhetorically to get me back to doing work?  By this point, I hadn't even thought about how long I really was sitting there, not doing my work.  As a result, I shrugged at her question, picked up my pencil, and continued writing.

To this day, I really don't know if this crooked pinkie is something to worry about or not.  I haven't had any direct difficulties with my awkwardly-shaped finger, so I can only assume it's perfectly fine.  From feeling and comparing both pinkies, it seems as though the top half of the first joint was moved off-centre, or perhaps it popped out of place entirely.  I have no idea.  It hasn't given me any real problems, though, and at best it's given me something to write about as I reach the end of my ISC evaluation!  Live and let live, I suppose.

It was a long story, but it was worth telling, if you ask me.