I was thinking about my dad’s old girlfriend Sandra today, but don’t read her name as “Sandra” since she will have a conniption. It is actually pronounced “Saundra”, like “sauna” except with “dra” at the end. So naturally my brother and I called her “Sandy” because that’s just the kind of little jerks we were back then. Dad met her when we were in high school and he actually moved to a different city to be with her. This was very convenient for us, as parents can be quite tedious when you’re trying to be a teenager. The most annoying thing about the situation was that Dad took a piece of art in our living room out of its frame and replaced it with the cocktail napkin on which Sandra had written her name and number. We’d have our friends over and have to explain that our dad was a goober and that’s why we had a cheesy cocktail napkin framed in our house. I have no idea why that made me so mad; maybe I should add that to the list to ask a therapist about. But anyway, Sandra was a nice person. Her most offensive character trait was trying to befriend me in a mother-daughter fashion, which culminated in my explaining to her that I already had well over my quota of parents and I really wasn’t shopping for any more. So anyway – and I realize that’s a really long introduction to get to my point, but sometimes I have a habit of giving too many details and going on about things – she had this condition where her skin didn’t produce natural oils. She had to apply lotion all the time, and her hands were still always a dry, cracked mess.
All of that to say that I was looking at my hands today and they are not the hands of my youth. I need to add to my class reunion to-do list to get hand transplants. Call me if you know a good donor, size XS.
