one arm woman

Why OneArmGirl and not OneArmWoman?, a reader wants to know. Funny, because when I turned 30 this past spring, feeling I might now be able to sit at the adult table, I was asking the same question; not about my blog, but about myself. I had a crisis of sorts, not mourning my 20s, but wondering if I was woman enough to be 30.

Chronically the late bloomer, I feel I’m at least five years behind the curve on most things. I bought a DC Talk cassette in the late '90s, one of the early ones when they were still rapping; I saw the first Godfather last year; I tried smoking a cigarette for the first time in my late 20s, previously believing that it would kill me, not slowly paving my lungs with tar, but the next day.

Now suspiciously eyeing the three or so short shorts still left in my closet, I’m concerned about living up to my age. Maybe I need to buy some dress suites, I don’t know.

“Would you rather be a woman or a lady,” my friend Rick, also with one arm, asked once. We both agreed woman, though I’m assuming he was speaking hypothetically for himself. Woman evokes power and sensuality and reminds me of closing at the Hastings bookstore when Lenny Kravitz’ ‘American Woman’ pumped out the store sound system into my veins. Every time I hear that song, I feel an urge to organize bookshelves...or maybe start boxing. A lady sips tea and carries Emily Post; a woman doesn’t have to wear makeup to be beautiful.

I want to be a woman, I really do. Girlhood remains too vivid to entertain nostalgia. I was full of concerns then, like whether pacifism was a viable political ethos in the emerging global climate. In that sense, I feel like I’ve been 30 my entire life, or what I imagined 30 to be, just waiting to fit in my skin.

But what makes a woman? Ownership, pride? Feminism feels alien to me; like an exotic animal I visit at the zoo, but always looking through the fence. I don’t know what a rivet is, much less a riveter (though it sounds interesting). Hearing only distantly the call to arms that roused my foremothers, I feel most myself when men open doors.

I expected to feel arrived at 30, but now I don’t feel old enough. Problem is, I’m having more fun being an adult than I ever did being a kid. Just thinking that I could go out today, shave my head, and tattoo a dragon on it, makes me giddy. Or, I could make pancakes for dinner, every night, for a week, and no one could stop me. No one would know till the morning paper: “Woman dies of carb overdose.” Yes, woman.

Maybe adulthood is not so much an arrival as another passing through. I’ve been considering less what I need to build up, thinking more about what needs tearing down; digging through the layered years, excavating my girlhood, trying to find what’s real and what’s not. I’m letting go of career to pursue calling; beginning with buying a pink writing notebook with Tweetie on the cover so I keep laughing at myself.

But why OneArmGirl? One might argue I have an increasingly repressed need to reconnect with my inner child. Yes, one could argue that. But on the surface, it just sounds better; it’s catchy, more marketable. Yeah, I’m an artist obsessively questioning identity, but I also have a lot of business in my blood.

OneArmWench, also very catchy, was suggested, but then I'd feel pressure to post regular pirate references. I was once Sultry Sarah the One-Armed Pirate, but that's a story for another time...

OneArmGirl


*This is the first installment of a series called 'Ask OneArmGirl' that will explore reader questions, but probably never answer them.

autistic horses

When I first got my job, I told people I worked with autistic horses, which was not true, but easier than "I work with horses and teach riding lessons at a farm residence for women with autism." By the time I get to the end of that, I see faces contort from interest to confusion to spaced out thinking about a favorite Seinfeld episode.

This is good, because if they manage to stay focused, the next question is usually, "What is autism exactly?" or "How do you feel about the exponential growth of the autistic diagnosis in the modern age?", the answer to either I do not know, nor do I particularly care.

What I care about is people, and how horses transform them. When I see a person, scared and intimidated, go up on a horse and break into a smile, her whole body taking on a shy confidence even she didn't know she had, everything else I've witnessed loses color.

At least twice a week I try to convince riders to climb 5.5 feet off the ground onto a horse called Sam I Am. If we get that far, I'm ready to call it a day and head back to a shower and the latest online episode of House.

Regardless of what autism is or isn’t, all of the women who live on the farm are different, puzzles that I’m trying to put together. Missy stands to my chin and slides on small steps like beginning on roller skates. “Hi Tash” she said the first time she met me. Up on Sam, she responds with an affirmative “Yep” to my inquiries: “Missy, are you comfortable?”...“Missy, are you having a good day?”... On about the fifteenth “Yep,” I get suspicious. “Missy, are you a space alien?” “Yep,” she says, not missing a beat.

But mostly what I "do" is drive 20 minutes to a barn in the valley, near enough to trail ride to the Rio Grande, work on my farmer's tan, play with horses, and restrain my wrath toward a rowdy pack of pygmy goats. I find it endlessly ironic that the work I enjoy the most is physical; working with my hands...or hand...or teeth or foot, whatever gets the job done.

All three horses at the farm have handicaps, causing me to wonder if I was hired to maintain consistency. All together, we have a bowed tendon, severe arthritis, and one blind eye. They would probably be diagnosed autistic as well, according to Temple Grandin's Animals in Translation, which explores the similarities in cerebral processing between animals and those with autism. Both are more aware of everything than the rest of us.

A few months back, I chipped a front tooth when I grabbed the metal end of a halter strap with my mouth. I looked in the mirror, horrified, imagining the slippery slope to losing dentures in the couch cushions. Turns out, it was fairly easy for the dentist to remedy. Life goes on. My lips are getting in shape now, sharing the workload with my teeth. And I smile thinking about what one might do with a degree in English literature.

“I like your hair, Tash,” Missy says from atop Sam. “Thank you, Missy,” I respond to the unexpected compliment. “You look like a grandma,” she explains.

OneArmGirl


Note: Names have been changed because I don't want the HIPPA Mafia coming after me.

warning: may contain adult content

“Hot girl with one arm wants me,” the link said, so of course, I clicked on it which led to part B, the dilemma: “Do I want?” I found myself on a web site called BodyBuilding.com, though it became evident most members were neglecting to exercise one essential muscle. This one question began a six page discussion, which I am ashamed to say I read most of, unable to peel my eyes from the monitor.

I should have been happy to note that most responders were encouraging, one chiming in with “girls with one arm need love too.” But the comments were generally too sexually degrading to be considered positive (all quotes are here edited to maintain this blog’s PG rating). Some posters wanted more information: How did she lose it? What did it look like? One said he would sleep with the girl if she just had a stub, but not if it was a “crab foot looking” thing. Only one heroic individual commented that “plenty of people are amputees” including his brother, who he said “doesn’t have any trouble getting the ladies.” And then there was this: “Nah, I could score hotter girls that weren't deformed so why go for one that is missing an arm?...I could stand there and have a conversation with the girl but it would be weird for me and I wouldn't enjoy it.” At this point, I very nearly joined BodyBuilding.com just so I could post: “Ignorant guy with big muscles wants me. Do I want?”

This should not have bothered me. I’m a grown woman who’s known plenty of men who were interested. And it should be noted that most of the posters in the thread were 19; it certainly could have been just a bunch of horny guys sitting at home taking a break from porn, but...it did bother me. I felt like I’d been stripped naked while a bunch of muscly dudes discussed the pros and cons of my physical appearance, leaving me anxious and clammy at 12am.

I was angered by the comments, mostly because whoever this one-armed girl was, if she even existed at all, was being talked about like a piece of meat. But I found myself pondering the question: Would I be with a guy with one arm? And here is the honest truth: sexuality aside, I don’t really want to be with a guy missing any appendages. I’m a one-armed hypocrite. It’s not that I’m never attracted to people missing arms or legs, and maybe I should get over the stigma, but I just think it would be too many crayons for one box. Tell me if you saw a couple of amputees walking down the road holding hands (refrain from pondering the possible logistical complications of this), you wouldn’t think, “Oh yeah, well of course, that makes sense”? I don’t want to spend the rest of my life running after onlookers yelling, “We’re really spiritually compatible!”

On Friday night, my roommate and I went to Marble, the cool brewery for locals. The place was packed, heads turned, and I was immediately self-conscious. Suddenly every man there was thinking, “Wow, I could never sleep with her!” Days past the BodyBuilding.com incident, I was still wearing rejection like a ratty jacket. I attempted a comedic defense mechanism and leaned over to Rebecca, “We should go around and take a survey of how many guys would do a girl with one arm.” Shortly, one guy at a table of mostly guys offered us a seat. I sat down hesitantly, my small arm nearly touching him. About thirty seconds into our congenial conversation, I saw it: interested eyes paired with a delighted smile, interest, directed at me. Oh yeah. We left a half hour later, no numbers exchanged; I wasn’t that into him. Not to mention, I don’t pick up guys at bars, one arm or two.

Perhaps I just need to face facts. Some people will be turned off by my one arm; and really, who am I to judge?


OneArmGirl

Is it just me?

“Every individual, by nature, should have his extraordinary points. But nowadays you may look for them with a microscope, they are so worn-down by the regular machine-friction of our average and mechanical days”

So says D.H. Lawrence in The Lost Girl. It resonates with my almost constant dogging fear of falling into ordinariness. Irrational fear, maybe, but if I should wake up one morning with two fully developed arms, I would immediately have a debilitating identity crisis.

I have not always been this way. I used to crave the status quo, longing to disappear amongst my peers, accepted, respected, and unnoticed. I went to great lengths, and achieved the first two, but I never disappeared, and every new venture among unknown companions, was a reminder of still being on the outside.

And statistically speaking, I am becoming less and less average in my peer group; being unmarried with no children, not even a dog, and making less money now than I was just out of college. Add one arm to that and we’re probably looking at the less than .000263 percentile. These days, I don’t even pretend to get out of my dorm room inspired sofa/bed in the morning trying to fit in. Yet, I’ve never been better than now, and I’m starting to wonder why I ever tried in the first place.

I certainly exist happily in the mundaneness of my life... one cup of medium roast coffee with cream in my Starbucks Athens mug each morning; the reliability of blue jeans and brown Roxy flip flops that have walked under my feet for the past seven years; driving the same road, to the same grocery store, where the same employee greets me somewhere in the pasta isle with his incredible smile.

But as my friend Pascal’s T-shirt says, “I tried being normal. It sucked.” I’ve found oddity to be opportunity in disguise. I want to be extraordinary. And admitting that, I feel a shifting and loosening, something like freedom. Perhaps I'll wear my pink flip flops today.

meet finneas

I lied. I am not a one-armed girl. I actually have one arm and 1/4 arm, a subtle yet significant distinction that my friends are quick to point out, lest I elicit too much sympathy. However, I feel, as titles go, “One Arm Girl” is a bit more catchy than “One and One Fourth Arm Girl.” Yes? Alright. Are we all still here? Retractions over, I would like to introduce you to Finneas, my left 1/4 arm.

I realize naming your appendages is not normal, and I would like you to know that I am not personally responsible for this. My friend Lucinda decided my arm had too much personality to remain nameless, and decided on Finneas, which I understand is the blanket name for cab drivers in Zimbabwe, akin to Jeeves among butlers. Lucinda’s husband is from Zimbabwe, so I’ll have to take her word for it. And I like Finneas, though I’m not sure how to spell it. It’s a better name than ‘little arm’ or ‘flipper’ or ‘What the hell is that?’; other descriptions employed. Ok, so I’ve never heard ‘What the hell is that?’ said to my face, but I’ve definitely imagined it.

Hidden under shirt sleeves for most of my life, Finneas is about eight inches long (I’m really bad at estimating, so he might be anywhere from five inches to a foot) with three fingers attached by skin, so they cannot move separately. From the best I can make out, what I have is a miniature deformed version of an upper arm attached to a hand. Interesting to note that, apparently, your hand develops in the womb before the rest of your arm, because I’ve seen other people with small hands attached at the shoulder. No one knows why my left arm never fully developed, though from time to time my mom confesses that she had one glass of wine and a Tylenol during her pregnancy with me. I generally look sadly at the floor and shake my head, “Yeah, that probably did it. Will you buy me a car?”

Finneas certainly deserves a name since he helps me with most everything that I do, primarily by holding things like milk cartons and books and small children; well, he can’t hold small children on his own, but he’s a team player. Lately, he’s been spending most of his time playing with the ends of my curls as they are now dangling long enough for him to reach. I’m hoping the novelty will eventually wear off. I recently found out how popular Finneas is while hanging out with some friends. It was raining and freezing, so I asked Ariel, who was sitting next to me, to feel how cold Finneas had become. When Kristen and Rebecca realized what was going down, both reached across the table to get in on the action. These are two of my closest friends and I had no idea getting to touch my small deformed arm had been a hidden dream, or how close I was to making that dream a reality. I do what I can.

And that’s just the beginning, but I’ve already written more than I intended. A quick note of appreciation: despite our rough start, and your probable decision not to trust anything I say from now on, I am ecstatic to see that I already have five blog followers, though I have yet to discover what exactly that means. And even more of you stopped by and left kind comments. This came as a surprise since I was mostly hoping my mom might read it from time to time.

(Also, my hair in the above photo was going through a bad time)

Love.

OneArmGirl

jumping in

Hello. I was born with curly hair and one arm.

How was that? You have no idea how much I have analyzed, stressed about and re-wrote that introduction in my head. Just getting to this point has been a journey of anticipation, fear, coming to the brink, then retreating under my various waterfowl down pillows. I couldn't afford the pure goose down.

So, this is how it begins, my very first blog ever. Even now I am filled with trepidation, overwhelmed by the impending responsibility of regular updates. I am a writer, but the kind that has to come very close to self-inflicted spatula whippings to actually get up in the morning and open a word processing document. So, welcome to my blog. I have high hopes that it will be a place of enticement amidst the throng; I am fully aware that EVERYONE has a blog, and that fact alone nearly kept me out of the ring. But I feel it's worth a shot, to push beyond my fears of losing my presently non-existent readership, because I enjoy writing for other people, even imaginary ones. That, and I really need an excuse to cancel my Facebook account.

Back to the one arm thing. I was born with one arm, and I've repeated that explanation so many times over the years, I was hardly thinking about what I was saying anymore; it just became a cursory necessity to meeting new people. It took me 25 years to realize it was actually interesting, that people had other questions, like "How do you put on deodorant?" (please see the above) Stuff I just took for granted. My friend Joey told me, "I think people don't talk about your arm cause they think you don't know."

So, I started talking about it, and writing about it, me and my life, one arm and whatever else came up. I hope this blog will carry on the flame; become a place where curiosity runs rampant, and discovery is an everyday kind of thing. If you'd like, come along for the ride.

And now, for my own commitment phobias, I hereby promise to update this blog at least once a week; perhaps more, but I like to set expectations well within my ability. I also promise a politically correct free zone; respect all people and ask whatever you want. Let's just try to keep gratuitous cussing to a minimum; I have nothing against the well-used curse word. Agreed?

Ok, then. Let the blogging begin.

Sincerely,

OneArmGirl