A Different View
You need hands but don’t know what to do with them
It was during a rare moment of reflection during a recent stand-up concert that my mind began to wander and I got to thinking – people really never know what to do with their hands.
The fully engaged fans were waving their paws in the air in time to the music, which was exactly the right thing to do.
But the more reserved spectators had them buried deep into the pockets of their jeans and the supremely self-conscious had them folded across their chests so that they looked like supervisors at a school disco.
The ‘hands buried deep in the pockets’ look used to be the preserve of bored or feckless teenagers; now we’re all at it. Which might just mean that all of those teenagers are now middle-aged and stuck in the habit – or we’re still struggling to find a use for them.
And when you actually think about it – which is something only those of us with sad lives have time to do – we’ve gone from the era of the bell-bottoms and three-buttoned waistline when it was the thumbs alone that acted as the hook to the pocket to keep the hands in place to a time when that practice was completely reversed so that you had the fingers in the tight pockets with the thumbs alone outside to face the world.
Today’s teens have taken the ‘hands in pocket’ look to new levels because they had to work harder to immerse themselves more fully than ever given that their trousers appear to hang somewhere around their knees.
But they can also manage this sitting down, particularly in the lecture hall and even in a classroom if a teacher doesn’t tell them to sit up straight and take their hands out of their pockets.
The reality is that if you saw someone with their hands straight down by their sides – the way that God and gravity intended them – you’d think they were slightly soft, unless of course they were Irish dancing.
And now with the evolution of Sean-Nós style, even the straight armed Irish dancer is under threat as the modern proponent has swapped the rigid stance – or the swan style of steady on top and paddling for all they’re worth down below – for a sort of human propeller.
Walkers use their hands for sure – again to propel them forward like the power-walking ‘ladies’ in Killinaskully – and inebriated people use them to keep their balance.
And sometimes we use them to hold hands with the other half or small children, provided of course they’re our own.
So hands clearly have their uses – and then they just get in the way. E
ven when we sleep, we don’t know where to put our hands – and that’s not a reference to keeping them over the bed clothes. In fact we’re so unsure what to do with them that we often sleep on them to keep them from doing damage.
Even when we’re sitting down, we’re twirling a pen between our fingers, twisting wedding rings, scratching, and occasionally clearing nasal passages – anything, really, other than the nightmare scenario of having nothing to do.
Newsreaders hold a sheaf of papers in their hands to give them something to do; they clearly never read them because they never look down at them – but there must be some reassurance in having something to hold when you’re reading the autocue.
Either that or it’s to prevent them from picking their nose.