Five Minute Friday Hand Intervention(Today’s Five Minute Friday prompt: Hands)

There’s a line from the 1998 film version of Great Expectations. Robert de Niro’s character, Arthur Lustig, says “They say the eyes are the windows to the soul, but I say it’s the hands.”

You can tell a lot from a person’s hands. Right now my hands are has-been stars trying to get back to where they used to be. That’s not a metaphor for me, though. That’s just the story of my hands. I used to be an athlete and gymnast, so my hands were tough, strong, and fingers lithe.

Now I have couch potato hands. My palms are soft little pansies, spoiled from years of resting on a keyboard and physically weak from years on its Mac sofa. If my hands went to the grocery story alone, they’d need two little Rascal scooters to shop. Don’t get me wrong. I love that I write, but I wish my hands did more moonlighting in a tougher milieu.

Right now my wedding band is holding my ring finger in a near-Jaws of Life situation, and I stubbornly refused to get it resized. I’m not chubby, soft, or sedentary. I’m a strongly latent athlete with dreams, whose fingers cramp from regular activities.

I don’t long for the days of disinfecting my bleeding gymnast palms, but I do want to have the hands of a part time farm hand again–sturdy, agile, and less sausage-y.

The good news is that I recently joined a great gym, so as the rest of my semi-plump body slims down, so will my hands. I’ll never be a hand model, but I would like them to be spokespersons (spokes-apendages?) for the rest of me saying, “Hey, I may sit typing a lot, but I also stand and hold things. You too can stand and hold things.”

This is a Five Minute Friday post, an unpretentious literary party. Join us.