knuckles.

fat-knuckled pool party in the summer. i am the weirdest.

When I was in fourth grade I heard that if you crack your knuckles then they will end up fat and gross.  Obviously that was mortifying, so at the very young age of 10 I made a new years resolution to stop cracking my knuckles as well as a new years resolution to stop biting my nails.

And guess what, foolz?  I did it.  Using much self control and perseverance, I successfully stopped biting my nails and cracking my knuckles. I mean, seriously. I did that!  I was ten!  And I did it! Seriously, I can still remember standing by the window in my fourth grade class and looking at my nails and being like, I can see white! Wild! And at the same time that I was looking at my nails I thought about how I could crack my knuckles at that moment, but I didn't want to!  It was seriously one of the greatest feelings and I was honestly SO one million proud of myself.

Wasn't that a great story with such a beautiful ending?

Well, if you think it was then stop thinking that because that is not the end and the real end is not beautiful.

A few years later, one of my friends told me that cracking my knuckles didn't actually make your knuckles fat and gross. To which I said, "Say whaaaaaaaaaa?!??!!"  I just spent the last three years living without the joy and satisfaction of hearing a knuckle crack. I mean, is there any sound more beautiful? (now 98% of you are like, 'Actually, knuckle-cracking is the grossest sound and the word knuckle is one of the top five grossest words.' Well, during the course of writing this blog post I can definitely agree with you on the part about knuckle being a gross word.)  Anyway, such a beautiful sound! And I've been missing it!

And so I promptly started cracking my knuckles again.  Except I only cracked the main knuckle on my fingers (does that make sense? the main joint? id even k.). But after a while I started to get a little cray cray and I started cracking the second joint. And then I learned to crack my thumb from the joint and then also by pushing up from lower on my hand (I'm sure that doesn't make any sense.)  And then I started cracking my knuckles back and forth to the sides.  I mean, wow.  I still don't do the one where you interlock your fingers and then push your palms away from you (my little brother does it and it's freeeee-kayyy), but I think I crack my fingers every other way.  I just calculated and if I were to crack my knuckles every way I know how, I would end up making 38 knuckle-cracking sounds. HOLY COW because then I thought about how I'm cracking my knuckles all the time and I'm sure I hear nearly 150 knuckle-cracking sounds a day, which means nearly 1000 a week,  4000 a month, and probably close to 50,000 knuckle cracking sounds a year!

My mind just exploded.

Anyway, look. I'm not particularly proud of myself for all the knuckle-cracking I do.  I mean, I really wish I would make a goal to stop cracking them just like I did back in fourth grade. So, it's a work in progress. I'm thinking about trying to stop doing the sideways knuckle crack. It's a start, right?

Okay, but here's the point. I gave you all that background because I wanted to tell you something that happened at work today (seriously, I will never be a short and concise writer, it's so ridiculous).  So this TA comes into the office and asks me if I'll call Campus Scheduling to schedule a room for him. I told him I could, so I picked up the phone and dialed the number.  While the phone was ringing, I started to crack all my knuckles without even noticing.  When I was most of the way through my knuckle-cracking routine, I suddenly realized that the entire office was empty and silent except for the two of us...and while I was listening to music while being on hold, this TA was just sitting there listening to every. single. crack.  Poor kid. I mean, maybe he didn't notice, but he was staring at my hands and he was standing in a silent room, so I'm just going to assume that he did.  I hope he was impressed because I was certainly embarrassed.

At least I can say that I never started biting my nails again since fourth grade. But I do have fat knuckles. Oh well.
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p.s. I'm participating in this thing called Slice of Life because Michaelanne convinced me to do it. Idk, I guess I write about a little slice of my life every day for the month of March. Except we all know that none of my slices will be little and we also know that apparently I'm not very good at keeping my goals (see above) so I j want to say that I make zero commitments about how committed I will be to this entire endeavor. Over and out.