five minus one is four

The other day (yep, that's how it's gonna start) a lady came to speak in my english class. After she had already been speaking a few minutes, my eyes were bothered by a nudge from my brain to pay closer attention to her hands: brainy was detecting something unusual and wanted confirmation. Nothing else to do, I indulged [transitively].

Next time her hands came into view my eyes immediately recognized what brainy had sensed: she had a missing finger, the right ring finger. My brain pumped its victory fists and started thinking of four-fingered characters, namely the ninja turtles. As to an irreverent child in a long church meeting I sent it a silencing look, but it was near impossible to reroute its focus of curiosity from the speaker's hands.

Issuing mental demerits, I required the brain to list other qualities about the woman that were just as, if not more, obvious: beautiful hair, eyes and smile; great and personable speaking skills; lovely skin; contagious enthusiasm and a delightful sense of humor.

But obviously the missing finger did stand out. Well, it's unusual.

But (again), the only reason I'm writing about this is because the next day, sitting in the mighty driver's seat (is it the driver or the seat that's mighty...?) in a mighty yellow bus at a red light, I looked to my right at the "don't walk" hand. It was missing the same finger!

I thought quickly: is the "don't walk" hand a left hand or a right hand? Always on the side of poetic coincidence my brain immediately voted for right. But I took a moment, visualized my own hand up in the "stop/don't walk" position and realized any person to see this gesture would be viewing my palm. therefore, the "don't walk" hand truly is a right hand.

My brain contentedly snuggled into the happy coincidence, musing about future blog post ideas. And here you see I indulged once again...(but at least I censured the idea of omitting every letter typed with the right ring finger).

(*not actual "don't walk" hand from street crossing spoken of; wrong finger. and wrong trees.)