Missing

When I was seven I got into a heated argument with my brother, and he slammed his bedroom door in my face. Unfortunately, my hand was resting on the doorframe, with left thumb between the frame of the door and the hinges, and even more unfortunately, my first reaction upon my thumb getting jammed was to pull it free.

It wasn't painful, up until the point where I noticed my entire thumbnail had been ripped off and was sitting in the doorframe. Then it hurt. Bad. I was taken to the hospital and my thumb was bandaged up. The nail eventually grew back, but it was a number of months before I could use that finger again.

I was taking piano lessons at the time, and in spite of my injury I wasn't too concerned. Surely I could compensate for the out-of-action digit with another finger.

No such thing. My music instructor absolutely refused to allow me to continue my lessons, insisting that I could NOT play a piano without a full set of fingers. My piano training ended with that.

I still enjoy listening to piano pieces very much. I still cannot play it.

On reflection, now that I'm older, my instructor was utterly terrible. On additional reflection, I should have read through my brother's music books and learnt to play myself, compensating for the injury as required. But for a little girl, the word of a teacher is the law, and if she said something was impossible, it was.

I think of this, every time I struggle to open a door while holding something in my only good hand, or whenever I have to take three trips to move equipment to a room, or whenever I have to find someone to ask for help to get the plastic wrap off a new box of pipette tips, or whenever my supervisor cracks yet another tasteless joke regarding my right hand.

And I swear that I will never allow that to happen ever again.