I have become suddenly aware that since I have been handling cardboard boxes and grease and all kinds of dirty things, that my hands are no longer the hands they used to be: soft, pale white, uncut. No, these hands are caloused, permadirty, and torn in various places.

I've often identified people by their hands. They say a lot about a person. A rough hand is a worker's hand, a smooth hand is a well product-ed hand. In some ways, a hand is a person's identity. Even police take "unique" identities from our hands; they call them fingerprints.

Surely, my fingerprints are still the same. [I just had major flashback of Leonard Cohen's "Fingerprints"] Yes, this body is the same one as before. But my hands...they're not mine.

I look at the work they are trained so well to do: sort the frieght, drive the forklift, change the propane cylander. My hands never used to do that.

A small part of me has changed, grown perhaps, from a place that can not be reached without losing experience--and we all know that an experience can never be lost. Is it growth into a young man, trained with expertise and professionalism? Or is it growth into a hedious beast, one of green skin, ripped shorts and back muscles so oversized that they push the neck and head forward, making a hunchback.

I have no doubt that whatever the end product, I will be satisfied. But I can only hope that in a world dependant on moisterizer and liang-liang, that there would only be understanding; hard work will make a hand change.