Don't ask me what this has to do with anything

The other day I was looking at my feet. I did it for too long and they started to frighten me.

No shit, I was scared of my feet. They just didn't look right, like some pallid monster from a Guillermo del Toro film. I had to cover them with something. Even that didn't help because afterwards I had such a hard time believing that I had REALLY been scared of my feet that I kept pulling down the blanket to look at them again. Sure enough, my feet were still disturbing as hell.

It was something to do with the way my arches swooped into my toes, and how bulbous my toes looked, cresting out from the end of my feet like gnarled waves.

I've had similar experiences with other body parts, though rarely as terrifying. The other day I found myself watching my hands type. It was baffling; these weird spidery creatures stroking and tapping at a keyboard. I knew full well they were only doing my bidding, translating my ideas from electrical impulses to motion to learned positions on a keypad that made things appear on the screen in front of me that were supposed to contain my thoughts, ideas, dreams, revelations and fears.

I wasn't concerned with the screen, I was watching the thick-jointed spiders. I didn't recognize the language they were using to talk to the keyboard. They were foreign and acting on their own. They seemed to know what they were doing, even if I didn't, and they applied their craft without taking note of their observer.

Later, when I had occasion to review their product, they seemed to have done their job satisfactorily: interpreting and streamlining the load of crap that tornadoes around the inside of my head. Looking back, it seemed the ultimate in task delegation and managerial trust.

I handed over a wheelbarrow of disorganized documents and ketchup-stained receipts and asked for a report on my desk by 5. Hands delivered.

While I am not a strict Mavis Bacon home-row typist, my typing speed and error count are unimpressive, my hands are accustomed to the keyboard. I don't have to think about typing (even if I have to go back and edit later). The freedom to put my hands to a keyboard and let my fingers parse-out the important bits and Tivo my internal monologue (sometimes it's a dialog) allows my mind to wrap itself around other things.

These things are generally trivial: how much I like blueberries (I really DO like blueberries), why my chest hair is in the shape of an X, why that lady is yelling at that old man.

One day, if I am very very lucky, I may have something important to say. Until them, you're stuck with this crap, and my hands will have to be content with describing how terrifying my feet are.