One of my friends actually called me out the other day. She said she had been reading my blog, and had to point out that I wasn’t posting a lot of “book meat” as she called it. This is the friend that was one of the first people I told about my book idea, and I think one of the reasons I told her first is because I knew she would be one to encourage me, and not cut me any slack at the same time. I assured her that I have more book meat than it appears, that there’s a lot of material just chillin’ out waiting for me to hit the submit button on it. I tend to over think things a lot of times, and I will write about something and let it sit for a while before I a ctually decide to hit that submit button. This is especially true for some of the more personal stuff you may find on here. Not to mention the fact that a lot of this stuff that I am writing about happened more than a few years ago, so I am having to do a fair bit of remembering here. I am starting to wish I had made notes as I went along, instead of trying to remember all this stuff years later. I guess what they say about hindsight really is true.

I think the next big piece of this crazy puzzle that I will tell you about is my very first job. I think that could probably be a book all by itself. I have been working on that post for a while, and I hope to have it finished pretty soon. OH, I have also been working on a post about the many, many times I have lost my leg and the hilarity that ensued. I can tell you this, there is nothing more frustrating than a dog running off with your leg in its mouth!

It is always interesting to see some of the search terms that people use when they end up here. I was looking through my blog stats the other day and came across some very interesting search terms. The title of this post for example was a search term that someone used and ended up on my sight. I just find it interesting that you can type “What you never know about fingers forks and chopsticks” into google and sure enough, there is knucklesnacks.com on the first page. To the person that was just trying to find a book on amazon and ended up here instead, I hope you found something on here that was at least somewhat entertaining, and let me know if that book is any good. Isn’t the Internet a wonderful place?

I talked about questions I get a little bit in previous post. Because of a recent conversation I had, I thought I would go back to that subject. I have always been amused by children that ask me questions. I would say at least 50% of the time, if a kid comes up to me to ask about my hands the question I get is “why do you only have two hands?”. I have never understood why so many kids come up with that same question. I still answer the question, without trying to make anyone (especially kids) feel bad for saying hands instead of fingers. A while back the subject of my hands comes up with some people, and one person makes the comment that I don’t have hands. I don’t even really know how to begin to argue that point. I mean just because my hands aren’t like everyone else’s, doesn’t make them any less hands. I of course argue in defense of my hands being considered hands, like anyone else would. I mean I may be a little biased because they are my hands after all, but even if they were on someone else I would still consider them hands. So the other day, said person brings this argument up again, and we go through the whole thing again, he argues that my hands aren’t actually hands at all because of the fact that I don’t have the “normal” number of fingers and/or a thumb. Unfortunately we were in an area where I had no service on my phone so I was unable to google a definition of the word hand to use in my defense. Not to worry, I have since used our good friend Mr Webster to obtain a definition of the word hand that I believe will win this argument for me. Now granted there are some alternate definitions on some less credible online dictionaries (only my opinion due to the strict requirements to qualify as having hands that these other dictionaries use) that state the definition of a hand as having a wrist, palm, four fingers, and an opposable thumb. For the sake of my argument, and because Mr Webster has never steered me wrong, we will be using his definition of a hand. According to the definition given by our trusted friend Mr Webster, I do qualify as having hands. I will copy the definition in question below, if anyone wants to argue this point further, feel free to do so in the comments on this post.

Score so far: 

Me = 1
My argumentative friend  = 0

 Main Entry:

Okay, I don’t really think laughter is the best medicine. I mean, come on, sometimes you just need an aspirin, and laughing just isn’t going to cut it. I do believe that laughter goes a long way to lift ones spirit. I try not to take life too seriously because its just too short for that. So when given the opportunity, I like to insert a little laughter into my life.

 A couple of months ago, me and a couple of friends went to the Oklahoma Aquarium to see my Catfish. We were leaving and watching people take pictures of their kids with this alligator statue. I thought there was a funny picture just waiting to be taken, and I was right. I told my friends what we should do, and we waited for most of the people to move on, no need in scarring any young kids for life. So we waited until the coast was clear and proceeded to take the following picture. Of course, as expected, as soon as I took my leg of and posed for the picture a large group of people came walking by. Most of them did the old double-take, to make sure they were really seeing what the thought they were seeing. I think the funny looks we got were definitely worth it, cause the picture is pretty funny. The only thing I would have done differently is probably pick someone else to hold me up, because as soon as the picture was snapped, he took off and left me there hopping around trying to put my leg back on. I’m just saying, give me a shoulder to lean on at least. If one of my friends will send me a copy of the picture, I will show you an incident I had with a front end loader one time.

I was at the book store a while back and was reading a book written by Artie Lang. In his book he talks about being completely honest. He tells a story about the lowest point in his life and was completely honest about something he went through. He talked about how his book wouldn’t really be what it could be if he sugar coated things. I have also had a few conversations with a person recently about honesty that have kind of made me put a lot more thought into this project. I have said before that this isn’t really going to work unless I am completely honest, and it is time for me to put my money where my mouth is!

I am completely honest when I say that being completely honest in my writing is not going to be easy. I think you can be honest without being completely honest. I think there is a point , when you are trying to write about how you feel, where you cross a line and things become painfully honest. I can tell you how I feel and be honest, but then I can go that extra step and tell you how I feel, why I feel that way and try to explain right down to the last painfully honest detail. That is where I want this to go, although I am not exactly sure how this is going to turn out. I guess if you are one of the people that read my blog we will find out together.

Sometimes I feel like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day. I feel like my life is a cycle that just repeats itself. I am sure everyone feels that way at some point, but let me try to explain why I feel that way. Life is all about relationships. You meet people in life and no matter what the relationship is between you and those people, you have to go through the whole getting to know each other process. You make new friends, you get to know new friends better, and just when you have them figured out you meet new friends and the process repeats itself. My cycle has always been meet new people, explain my differences to new people, try to get to know new people better while at the same time trying to seperate the ones who fully accept me and the ones that don’t. I mean for the people in my life those are really the only options, accept me completely and without condition, or don’t. For the ones that don’t, my attitude has always been thanks for playing, better luck next time.

Here is where things get a little tricky. I go through the same thing every time I make new friends. I get the questions, that’s understandable. I am happy to answer questions. I use humor a lot to deal with situations, which eventually leads to people feeling comfortable enough to make jokes. Which again I am totally fine with. However, sometimes there comes a point where I am no longer comfortable. It’s a fine line between being hypocritical, because if someone is comfortable enough making jokes about themself I am ok with joining in. There is also a fine line between wearing my feeling on my sleeve, and letting things roll off my back. I think what really gets me is the times that I really feel like I have been through this before and I feel like we are beating a dead horse. I really try hard not to let things get to me, and the people that know me best know that my breaking point is really high. It normally takes a lot for me to finally get to the point where I have had enough. The part I have the hardest time with is expressing to people that I have had enough. I honestly, after 34 years, still do not know how to handle certain situations. I get so frustrated at times that I just can not come up with a rational thought. I don’t how to tell people that I just want them to stop and think about what they are saying, instead of being able to just calmy express how I am feeling I just clam up and not say anything. I am sure it makes me look bad at times, I am supposed to be an adult and really should have things together at this point in my life. Yet there are times when I can not for the life of me handle certain situations without making things worse than they have to be.

For me I feel like sometimes people look at me and think that my differences define who I am as a person, and that couldn’t be farther from the truth. I don’t feel like my physical differences define me any more that being tall, or skinny, or short, or overweight defines who any else is as a person. I don’t think that physical features can define a person, I do however fully believe that how a person chooses to live with said physical features and what a person makes of the hand they are dealt fully defines who a person is. I think how I have chosen to deal with my differences and the fact that I embrace my differences and live life to the fullest in spite of them defines who I am as a person. I think for me, sometimes I just wish people would look past the differences completely, and focus more on  how I chose to live with them.

This is another subject that I will be coming back to, because I don’t really think I can cover all of this today. I appreciate all of the people that are taking the time to read this, and appreciate the good feedback I have received. I realize this probably still seems a bit random at this point, but I promise it will all make complete sense at some point to some one out there. I just can’t promise it will be you :)

I have a few post that I am working on before I publish them. It is some pretty deep stuff, so check back in a day or two for that. For now I want pose a couple of questions, and give you some food for thought.

I feel like you meet two kinds of people in life. People that accept you for who you are, and people who don’t. What is the difference between people that completely accept you for who you are and those who don’t? I know you have met people that you just didn’t feel like the really accepted you for the person that you were. You may meet someone else who completely accepts you, with no questions asked. Now, I am going to assume that for the most part you are who you are, so you are not the one changing. So assuming you are who you are all of the time, what is the difference between people that do and people that don’t accept someone for who they are?

I will give you my thoughts on this subject later, but I would like to know what you think? Use my contact page, or comment on this post and let me know.