This Is This

I have written before that I am the least clumsy person I know. I have cereal bowls from the 1970’s, glasses gone cloudy like glaciers and all manner of things which are not built to last lasting.

I can boast about this because I have many other faults. I mean, I don’t like put cheese in soup or anything, but I have some minor flaws.

Maybe I’ve got enhanced spacial awareness or something. Or just really dependable thumbs.

My thumbs are very strong. On the right you’ve got the one (no I don’t have names for them) that holds up a saxophone. My teacher said you should lift a sax lightly.

Not like the annoying 80’s lofty tippy wailing sax pop solos -oh god - but it sounds better when you don’t have 7 pounds of brass, nickel and pearl pressing down on your bottom lip.

“And don’t let the neck strap take all the strain,” he would say in his heavy Nicois accent, “- balance, balance”, which in French means both “balance” and “swing”; perfect for this.

The other one holds down chords on a guitar with a higher action than Snakes On A Plane.

If you’ve ever lost the use of your thumb, you’ll know how essential they are. I put a knife through mine once. Normally I’m safe using tools on account of my not being clumbsy.

I take precautions. I wear gloves, I get a steady footing and put on safety goggles so big that when I’m hunched over and concentrating, you’d swear Miles Davis was in the room with you. But this one time my surehandedness left me with a blade in my thumb.

For the following week, most of my thoughts were preoccupied with shoelaces, hoping they wouldn’t come undone at work and cause me the embarassment of asking a colleague to tie them for me.

They did once, and the colleague in question obliged, but didn’t spare me the shame of talking me through the process, using metaphors of bunny ears as part of his instructions.

Did you know lemurs have ball and socket joints in their thumbs?

I don’t know why I just said that. Many things sound better in my head than on here. Sometimes I don’t even know why I have a blog.

I guess it keeps me out of print.

For now.

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Related posts
(or “REALLY? Have I Been Doing This Blog So Long That I Have A List Of Thumb-Injury Related Posts? Is That What It’s Come To?”)
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This entry was posted on Thursday, October 18th, 2007 at 6:30 am. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed, or you can skip to the end and leave a comment yourself.