Monday, October 29, 2012

Finding Beauty

I really wanted to tell you more about  Photoshopping the pictures of the kids.  Can you tell I just finished that?  I'm very proud of my work.  I have about seventy-five decent pictures, mostly of different kids, though I took more of one kid because I'm good friends with her mom.  Out of respect, I took some of her pictures out of the bunch.

I have to tell you that there was one girl who was totally snooty with me last year at fifth-grade camp.  She may be pretty, but she has no concept of manners.  She was in the middle of quite a few of the pictures I cropped today and I just couldn't find a decent way to cut her out. 

"Is it unethical to add zits to someone's forehead?" I asked. 

"Yes.  Don't do it," Mike said.  I wasn't really going to do it.

"This kid may be pretty on the outside, but inside, she's covered in zits," I said.  That was mean.  Nick came over to see who I was talking about.  Crap!  I quickly closed the photo before he could see.  The good part is that if he did manage to see even a little of it, there were six girls in the shot.  My girl was mugging in the middle.

Does being pretty change your character? 

The funny thing is that one of Nick's friends has an older sister who is absolutely stunning, yet she doesn't seem to know it.  The other kids don't seem to know it either.  How is that?  Do they only see the beauty that is thrown in front of them like a banner?  Maybe.

I have an odd sense of beauty.  I like looking at people and now and then, I'll just look for features that are beautiful, hands, ears, the bones at the wrist.  It doesn't matter.  Just try it.  If you're honest with yourself, any ugly person universally has some beautiful feature.  The reverse goes too, that beautiful people usually have some ugly feature. 

I especially like looking at hands.  People do so much with their hands that they have a special meaning.  Try that too.  Some time when you're watching someone who creates things with their hands, just look at their hands as they move.  Even the callouses send a message.  My next-door-neighbor used to have wonderful hands.  This was my best friend's dad and sometimes we'd help him while he worked in the garage.  He had really wide thumbs with very short fingernails.  I have always loved those thumbs, as if his whole sweet character were defined by his thumbs.

I know it's some form of stereotyping, but do these features really relate to characteristics or am I generalizing from a narrow band of experience?  Do men with wide thumbs make more patient fathers?  Do girls with the little points on their ears have trouble staying grounded?  Do women with solid bones make better cooks and gardeners?  It has to be a result of my limited experience, doesn't it?

It's an interesting question.  I've heard people say, "he has kind eyes."  What do kind eyes look like.  We can read impatience, anger, even people who are completely out of touch, so how do we do it? I've read that even dogs read faces.

Teddy reads me like a book.  I just wish my guys could read me that well.  Okay, I guess that might be a little creepy.  Do you remember that guy in high school who was so attentive that he'd pick up a tissue you'd dropped and look at it as if it held some clues as to your hidden desires?  Teddy is like that, only he's a dog so it doesn't annoy me.  He's not a totally clingy dog either, so that helps. 

But it just wonder if it's true, if the shape of my hands could tell you who I am.

Thank you for listening, jb

 

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