la famiglia italiana

This summer is honing me into a champion channel-surfer. Honestly, I am very impressed by the combination of the nimble agility of my remote-button-pressing fingers with the lethargy of the rest of my body. As I sit, a puddle of slumpy posture and comatose laziness, my fingertips dart across the tiny stadium that is the surface of the button board of our small black remote control for the downstairs TV (I mostly watch TV downstairs because that one has one extra channel). It's amazing, the activity level of my fingers compared to the rest of me. Even my brain is resting and my heart is probably beating slower, and my eyes, blleeeeghhhhhh-ly half-opened, don't even  have to be looking down at the remote. The fingers have memorized every plushy button, every crook and nanny, every small indentation of this magical little box that controls the bigger magical box.

..................

Okay seriously, why do I never write about what I'm really blogging to write about in the first paragraph? What is wrong with me? I wanted to write about Italian families and Korean families. Hing.

companion to four fingers?!

hrmmmm

What an understatement of a definition.
Thumbs are great...

• because their foot-counterparts, big toes, help us stand upright
• for holding chopsticks...and the other utensils, too.
• because they are so expressive. They are the only specific digits that can say "yea" and "nay" and "I feel pretty ambivalent about that." I guess they could even express halfway emotions, if you use the angles cleverly or something.
• because they are stout but proud. Even though they only have two segments, they don't have a complex or anything about it all.
• with kids. haha
• for hitchhiking purposes. You don't even have to have one of the hitchhiker variety.
• when you're painting your nails because of the relatively formidable surface area. What a relief to be able to start out on such a large palette.
• because it can be green. No one has a "green pinky."
• for playing the piano with extra force, or when you're trying to play octaves, or when you just feel like playing the piano with just thumbs.
• for opening doors and ovens like civilized people. 
• for holding pencils!
• to type with on a computer keyboard with expertise. Can you imagine how much longer/how much more effort it would take to move some other finger down to the space bar every single time you had to insert a space? ...I am tired just thinking about it.
• because it would be really hard to hold open stubborn paperbacks with just your four non-opposable digits. Dang.
• when you're picking out a piece of candy from the candy bowl

But you're right. There are some really important things that the other fingers do, too. Like pinky-wave at your friends and lovers, dip into sauces and soups to let you have a taste, pick nose holes (okay I guess you could pick your nose with your thumbs but...hmm), flick things off your blanket, wear the marriage ring on the marriage/love finger, press all the other keys of the computer keyboard and piano keyboard,  and close the clasps of necklaces/button buttons (yeah the thumbs need help a lot of times, but they're not ashamed of that). And other stuff. I guess it's the cooperation of all the fingers and their adjoint (is this even a word? Oh, oops.) friend the palm that makes up the whole magic of hands.

Yay for hands. Yay for thumbs. Yay for...all the fingers?! Oh no, generalizations wreak havoc once again.