Okay, straight out and up front, here’s the logic: The human body is so well designed that everything about it has a purpose. Your job, and best you never take lightly any of its remarkable capabilities, is to be the watchdog keeping it safe.
In that respect, cardiac and cancer issues make for the biggest headlines. On any given day, there’s hardly anything that can be added to what is already being said about them. If that weren’t enough, we are awash in updates and advice on how to be healthier and live longer.
Naturally, most all of that concerns all those out of sight out of mind organs hidden under our skin. Taken for granted and almost forgotten are those highly visible ten fingers we use to grab, hold, and squeeze and the ten toes we use to keep our balance and move in every direction.
Those functions and actions are so automatic we don’t take time to respect their complexity or wonder how we could get along without them. But imagine trying to get by with fewer and you will suddenly realize that every one of them is a top performer. None are there merely for looks, neither are there any spares.
For example, try to twist the lid off a jar and you will discover by both seeing and feeling that the two big “twisters” aren’t the large and seemingly powerful thumb and first two fingers, but rather your ring finger and little pinky. For proof, hold back those two fingers and see what happens — or more importantly, what doesn’t happen because it can’t.
What really drives that point home is to think about the changes you would be forced to make if you were to lose the services of just one finger. Whether typing or pecking out a message on your cell phone, you would be forced to make some serious adjustments. The fact is, lose any of your present dexterity and you are going to be facing a steep challenge of how to adapt.
Your toes are no different. The big toe delivers much of the force needed to move you forward. Conversely, and in much the same fashion as your ring finger and little finger, that runt of a little toe and its companion are largely responsible for you being able to maintain your balance or otherwise keep you from falling over. The remaining two toes — the middle one and its bigger brother — are able to lend valuable support no matter in which direction you wish to move.
As with your fingers, the loss of one or two toes will call for some big changes in what you had automatically been doing without even thinking.
The biggest surprise, however, is how complex those innocent looking fingers and toes really are. In the world of surgery, working on hands and feet is even more demanding than brain surgery. The absolute and undeniable intricacy of the arrangement of nerve endings and muscles is beyond belief. Those in the know sum it up this way: Becoming a successful hand surgeon is regarded as one of the most exacting challenges of all the aspects involved in properly maintaining and repairing the human body..
Among a myriad of other factors, your sense of touch alone depends on an intricate interweaving of both nerves and muscles all of which, of course, must be exactly coordinated. That applies to everything you do from tying shoe laces and forcing a button through a button hole to gripping a golf club and walking the dog.
Of course, under the most favorable circumstances, fingers and toes can be reattached, but even if the operation is successful, they will never work as well as the ones you were born with. The same goes for an artificial substitute.
The logic of all of this is simply that of being aware of what you must do to protect those twenty miracle workers. In short, keep them well away from anything likely to mash, cut, break or otherwise do harm. And think before you act. Ask anyone who has lost one or more of their twenty and they will tell you how quickly it happened and if only they had . . . .
Your ten fingers and ten toes are amazingly and ingeniously strong and durable, but as with any other part of the human body, they aren’t invincible — and neither are you Superman or Wonder Woman!
