Hands in Unusual Places

Hands In Unusual Places

Have you ever truly given yourself a moment to wonder about how many experiences we allow ourselves to have that are truly and utterly odd and, frankly, a bit absurd, if taken out of context?

A simple example might be, perhaps, how close we stand to one another in a room.  If the room is 10 feet long, and we have 8 people in the room, we may give ourselves a good foot or two between each of us.  But if we shrink the room to the size of, oh, say, an elevator, then we think it's completely normal for all four of the people to be standing side by side, front to back, touching even and we wouldn't think anything odd about it.  But if the same 8 people were to stand in the same formation in the 10 foot long room, we'd think it odd.

So what about hands in unusual places?

In a normal situation, would we be comfortable if we were, perhaps, sitting in a local coffee shop, just chillin', and a person came up, pulled on some gloves, and then asked you to open your mouth and then they spent the next 45 minutes playing about with your teeth, squirting water in, sucking water and saliva out?  Seems absurd, no?

And yet, we allow dentists to probe our mouths for 45 minutes and think nothing of it.  That is what I call hands in unusual places.

These past few months I've realized there are several scenarios in which people are allowed to poke their hands in strange and unusual places, that in normal situations, we simply would not accept.

Say, for example, the gastroenterologist, who poked a couple holes in my belly, and then pulled out body parts and sewed me back together.  Someone ACTUALLY had his hands INSIDE of my belly, and I not only thought it was a nifty idea, I PAID him to do it.  His hands.  Inside of my tummy.  INSIDE.  That's so weird.  Hands in unusual places, I tell you.  Hands in unusual places.

Or what about the yearly trip to the gyny who frolicks about in my nether regions without so much as a howdy do.  Again, another experience of hands in unusual places.  Seriously weird.

We think nothing of the ophthalmologist who sits INCHES away from our faces, probing bright lights into our eyeballs, feeling their breath on our faces, while we sit there placidly looking at the big giant E at the end of the wall.

We babysit toddlers who stuff their fingers into our mouths or poke their fingers into our ears and pull our hair out by the handful.  But if a grown up were to do the same thing?  Our reaction would be quite different.  Hands in unusual places.

Life is so weird.  How did we, as children, come to accept these oddities as "normal and acceptable behaviors" in some situations, but not in others?  No sweetie, if you're walking home from school and a man drives up in a van and offers to give you candy, you do not take the candy.  You run away as fast as you can and you tell mommy.  But, yes, sweetie, it's okay to go up to the stranger's door, ring the bell, and ask them for candy.  But only if you dress up in a costume and say the words, "Trick or Treat."  And only on the 31st of October.  No sweetie, we do not sit on the laps of old, fat men.  But yes, sweetie, we DO sit on the lap of this one old, fat, man, who wears a red suit.  He'll give you a piece of candy afterwards.

Sometimes life is just pretty darned weird.  And when you find yourself with someone else's hand in a strange and unusual position, don't get all creeped out when you realize that as soon as she walks out that door, she's just going to walk into another room, and poke her hands in someone else's strange and unusual place.

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