I had a thought the other day after seeing a girl with a service dog cross my path. I assume she had a vision disability or might have been completely blind. I didn’t ask her, but noticed how she and the service dog worked together to comfortably get around. In our disabilities studies unit, I have definitely learned to see bodies in a different way. 

But what if there are two bodies working for one goal? There is the animal, who is the pair of eyes and guidance, and there is the human who relies on the animal for sight and nothing else. It seems like a fascinating experience. I don’t want to say that the animal is on the same intellectual level as the person, don’t get me wrong, but to think that two beings can work in tandem so flawlessly is incredible.

Then I started wondering: Is this an extension of the body? Could this be considered one body since the person was relying on the animal for sight? There must be no other experience like it: two beings, two bodies moving through the world together, both aware of each other yet both so finely in tune. 

Maybe when the two work together it is more a combined body. Neither one is an extension of the other, and separately they get on fine alone. Maybe the combined body is just as easily learned as a single body. From what I’ve read and learned in the class, bodies adapt based on the way they need to move through space, and each movement is unique to the individual. 

I would have loved to ask the person what the experience is like. Not to exploit the person, but just to keep learning the nature of others and what it must feel like to experience a body along with another body. 

Everyone has that weird part of their body that they wish they could change. I feel like a majority of people I’ve talked to that they want to change something obvious like their nose or weight or maybe a birthmark or scar. My nose never really bothered me, the scar on my stomach gives me reasons to dish out different stories of how I received it (usually involving a bar fight or a rabid zoo animal), and the only birthmarks I have are random freckles from sun exposure.

But the body parts I hate the most are my hands. They seem abnormally small to me, and I have had several comments on them throughout my life. My friends love to put their hands up to mine so they can giggle at how their beautiful, regally long fingers curl over my stubby little stumps. It doesn’t help much that I bite my fingernails to the point of no return, rendering my poor little fingertips rounded nubs. I love winter because I get to wear gloves to hide my shame. Sometimes my hands decide to stop holding things without my consent which leads to spilled martinis at work, or the inability to untangle knots. This is so petty, and most of this is in jest, but they truly are a source of specific insecurity. I used to think it was pathological to be so uncomfortable with a very small percentage of my physical appearance.

What’s great and somewhat comforting is a conversation I had with a friend of mine. She hates her ears. Hates to the point that I realized she meticulously fixes her hair in such a way that you forget she even has ears. She claims they are too small and they look as if they hadn’t completely formed.

“They’re just ears. I don’t even notice them” I said to her.
“I could say the same about your strange hands,” she said back. “I don’t even notice them either.”

This is just a passing thought, nothing too serious or too deep, but its interesting sometimes to hear what people can’t stand about their bodies. Something we never think twice about, like ears or eyes or hands may be someone’s biggest insecurity that they constantly try to hide. Furthermore, when it is something obscure like ears or fingers, I wonder how this particular body part became important. Media and advertisements definitely want people to look a certain way, but I never see ears being in the forefront. I also know a girl at work who is convinced that her knees sag to an unattractive point. Oh, the ways in which we pick ourselves apart. 

I hope I will develop a better relationship with my hands. They do a lot for me, and they go through the ringer every time I write a paper, text a friend, or make a martini for a bar customer.  Maybe one day we will all be able to live in harmony and I can move onto the next body part of insecurity. Like feet, possibly. 

Ugh. Feet.