My Stinky Left Side
...
Well, it has been three weeks now since I broke my ring-finger on my right hand, and sprained a knuckle on the hand part of the same finger. I'm coming to grips with (grips? no, sorry, no grip...) how to do things with my left hand. Some things are rather difficult to do with your left hand, like wiping your b...nevermind. You get the idea. Other things are impossible to do with your left hand, like washing your left arm and arm-pit in the shower.

To help you make a real fool of yourself in any attempt to wash your left side modern Medicine has come up with some incredibly great inventions. Well, at least one anyway: the full-arm-plastic-rubber-air-tight glove for instance.

I was so pleased when my doctor gave me this (and I use the word "gave" loosely, as I know I'll be getting a bill for it... or my insurance company will anyway). "Yeah," she said. "They are completely air-tight and water-tight. You can wear it in the shower, and it even has a separate place for your thumb so you can hold your bar of soap!

Why I didn't think of it then, I cannot imagine. Perhaps it was the excitement of something completely new: I've never broken anything before (bones, that is). Or perhaps it was my doctor's own enthusiasm for this modern medicinal marvel.

Anyway: think about it! Give me a break: holding a wet bar of soap in the shower with a rubber glove?????

Yeah, that's right folks: I spend more time chasing the bar of soap around the shower.

Well, at least they've finally thought of one thing anyway: how to make the thing so that no water leaks in. Pretty ingenious, really. At least I can even TAKE a shower! But never mind trying to hang onto your bar of soap!

So, that leaves me with the question: what to do about my left side?

I've finally gotten to where I can reach into places I never dreamed of with my left hand. Sometimes I'm nervous I'm going to tie my left arm in a knot trying to reach places. But there remains the unreachable: Left Underarm!

You see, I'm no monkey. I know monkeys can scratch their arm-pits with the same hand, but humans aren't designed that way.

Well, I've thought of a couple of ways to solve the problem:

a) wash cloth: yes you can actually hold a wet and soapy wash cloth in the shower with that enormous rubber glove. At least for a while. You just have to overcome the feeling that you are no longer manly if you use a wash cloth. Yes, next thing you know I'll be wearing white gloves, and keeping lace handkerchiefs in my pockets.

b) scrub brush: yes, well sometimes my arm pits need scrubbing out with a scrub brush anyway...

Then there are other miscellaneous left-side problems: like trying to get enough strength in your few free fingers of the right hand to clip the nails on your left hand, or worse: foot.

Then there is always the retrieving things from your pocket problem. I'm trying to put things into pockets that I can get at with my left hand, but every once in a while I forget, and cause an embarrassing scene trying to fish things out of a right pocket with my left hand. The other day I think someone almost called the police on me for public indecency.

I am at least learning how to type with only three fingers on one hand (that is, if you count the thumb as a finger --- ah, what the heck, they are all thumbs on that hand anyway.

Well, enough for now.

Regards!
Basil