Do me a favour. Right now. Hold your hands up. Look at them. Don't look at them as being your hands, look at them the way you'd look at a sculpture. Disassociate yourself from them and see them for what they are: amazing. Simply amazing. Those things in front of you are the reason we're not still living in caves. I often look at my hands in this manner. I think my hands are beautiful; not in the traditional sense of beauty (they'll never be used to model hand cream or gloves), but beautiful in form, construct and function. I could stare at them for hours; sometimes I have. My fingers aren't long and slender, my wrists are a little skinnier than I'd like, and my ulnar prominence is, well, prominent; there are more scars covering my hands than I can count (if you excuse the pun) using the fingers on both hands. However, nowhere else on the body is my anatomy more clearly defined. Skin, bone, muscle, tendon, blood vessels. All there for me to see, manipulate, play with. Opposable thumbs are a masterstroke of design. The hands are the tools that I use to manipulate tools. If I flex my fingers, my knuckles are brought out in sharp relief. Extend the fingers and extensor digitorum tendons pull out from the back of my hand. If I cock my thumb back, a small depression appears at its base where it meets the wrist: the anatomical snuff box. Back in the day, European snuff would be placed into the depression to be sniffed into the nasal cavity. If I push down into the anatomical snuff box, I can feel the pulse of the radial artery. If I make a fist, the veins on the dorsum of my hand are brought out; I can then palpate and manipulate these to my heart's content.
My hands will be my livelihood one day. I've always wanted to be a surgeon, and I've always loved using my hands. As a child, I played the piano; a skill that I rue allowing myself to lose. I'm naturally right handed, but I make the effort to use my left hand where I can to afford myself a measure of ambidexterity. Manual dexterity will be very important to me in my future job. Playing the piano for many years gives my fingers a measure of speed and deftness that has transferred very well to typing on a keyboard. I have a rather unorthodox method of typing; I never learned to touch type. My fingers just do what comes naturally to them. Unfortunately, they have a mind of their own and often, while my brain may think 'there', my fingers will work through the motions for 'though'.
I've started to train my hands in terms of manual dexterity for their future job; now's as good a time as any. It also affords a nice break away from the revision that's hanging over my head for my upcoming finals. Forty-five minutes of bookwork alternated with ten minutes of play time allows for optimal learning in my experience. Sometimes I just try to write with my left hand, forcing the ugly scrawl to become legible. If I managed to do it with my right hand when I was five, I sure as hell can manage to do it with my left hand aged twenty-five. Playing with a deck of cards is also good; not to play any particular game, just to learn how to manipulate the deck. Another trick that I've starting doing recently is walking a coin over the back of my fingers; it's an amazing thing to watch in someone who has mastered the art. As with all talents, those who can do it make it look so easy. Then you try it yourself and you realise that you're going to be spending a lot of time practicing this trick to make it look good. But you can train yourself; all you need is time and practice.
So... to the point
Take a largish, silver coin. I use a British 10 pence piece, but I'm sure that's comparable to the size of an American quarter. If I was you, I'd do this sitting on your bed; doing it sitting at a table will drive you and those around you batty from the sound of the coin falling on the table every three seconds. Do it sitting on an armchair or sofa and you're asking to lose it down one of the sides into the National Bank of the Back of the Sofa.
To start, place the coin heads up on the back of your index finger (either hand, I've been practicing with both, but that's just me) just above the knuckle. You should hold your hand so that your fingers are slightly curled into the palm, and so that the hand itself is slightly tilted so that the index finger is a little higher than the little finger. Now:
- Use your middle finger to pull the coin down off the index finger and allow it to roll onto the back of the middle finger; it should now be tails up.
- Do the same again, except using the ring finger to pull and flip the coin off the middle finger. The coin should now be heads up again.
- Now this is the tricky bit. Use your little finger to pull the coin off the top of the ring finger, so that the coin is held between said fingers, and with the majority of the coin being below the hand rather than above.
- Use your thumb to flick behind the coin and then slide it back to the starting position on your index finger, once again heads up. With practice, instead of sliding the coin with the thumb, you catch and balance the coin on the thumb tip, making the whole movement slicker to perform and watch.
- Repeat ad infinitum, or until you get bored. Either, or.
This takes a lot of practice to get right. It's important that you enter into this semi-zen state where you don't think about what you're doing; you just do it. To begin with, every movement will be clumsy and slow. You'll drop the coin more times than you can count. The first time I managed to do it five times in a row, I dropped the coin in shock. I'd now describe myself as being vaguely competent at moving the coin across the fingers, but it's still painfully awkward and clumsy. In two years time, I might just about be good enough to show the skill off down the pub to the amazement and admiration of friends and family. It's the difference between being able to do something, and being able to do it so that you make it look easy. Your eventual aim is not to manipulate the coin, but to allow the coin to fall with gravity while your fingers dance around it, catch it, and bring it back to where it belongs.
And this is only the first step. A bit more practice, you can get the coin to walk up your fingers rather than down them. Walk across the underside of the hand rather than the back of them. Have a coin walking on both hands at the same time. Have two coins walking across one hand at the same time. Three. Four. Start the walk from a coin toss start.
I started practicing this off my own back, but then I remembered that they've got this thing called the internet now. Apparently you can find information on various subjects with it. A Google search discovered this website, which you may find of use if you want to try this trick out for yourself.
I've just found a whole new hobby.
TenMinJoe says re walking a coin across the back of your hand : Hey, I taught myself this a while back. Learner's tips: Do it without looking if you possibly can (this actually helps, weirdly), do it *whenever* your hands are idle (helps if you watch a lot of TV) and lastly (vaguely icky & for very beginning to learn only) If you lick your knuckles, it makes them less slippery
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