Ican still recall the day in 1991, the room, and her name. My classmate Dana looked at my hands during an activity in elementary school and gasped, “Eww, your hands are gross! Why are they so ugly?” I promptly pulled them away from the table and hid them in my pocket. “My hands are gross?”, I thought. “What’s wrong with my hands?”
My young, confused mind raced all day.
Until then, I’d lived 11 years without ever noticing, caring about, or thinking there was something wrong with my hands. But this comment changed all of that. When I got home, I slowly took my hands out of my pockets and drummed up the courage to look at them. I flipped them over. Examined them. They were in fact dry, and flaky. They had freckles and an oddly placed mole on my left hand. They looked old, cracked, and worn. I couldn’t see the pores in my hands like all the other kids’ hands.