Unsticky Fingers

April 11, 2014

Disadvantages of UFA is the inability to snap one's fingers.

Hi, my name’s Bob, and I have unsticky fingertips.

As I inch my way toward retirement, (a nice way of saying, “Geesh! I feel old!”) I seem to have unwittingly joined a secret association of people recovering from sticki-less fingertips. In fact, recent research from the University of Arizona, where they study the effects on fingertips from dry, barren desert climate, has produced a study showing that fingertips in all adults over 39 wear down, sorta like sandpaper on a block of wood, or a kid licking his way to the center of a Tootsi Roll Tootsi Pop. And some adults can lose up to 103% of the fingerprints on their fingertips. The result being smooth fingertip pads with no character except wrinkles and dry cracks in the wrinkles, and a bunch of 80-year-olds enjoying a second career as cat burglars.

When I was a young whippersnapper (I say that because I fondly remember when I could actually snap my fingers), I remember my best bud Brett and I would stare bewilderedly at “old” people while they licked their fingers before flipping through a stack of paper, and then repeated the process every few pages. Even when I asked for money from my dad, he would whip out his leather billfold with one hand, and surreptitiously lick his thumb and forefinger on the other hand. He then flipped through a few bills, licked again and again until he found me a five-spot. Sometimes that five-spot came with a bonus twenty-spot. I know now that it wasn’t a bonus, but just the result of Dad’s slippery unsticky fingertips. Back then I thought, “huh, how annoying that must be to have a condition where paper merely slips through one’s fingers.”

I mention that because today I said to myself, “huh, how annoying it is to have a condition where paper merely slips through my fingers!!” Now, if ever I need to sort through a stack of papers, or even hold a pen, I am now dependent upon either licking my fingers which exposes me to any number of finger-borne germs (who knows where those one-dollar bills have been), or using a product called Sortkwik, a pasty stuff which is evidently made from a combination of glycerin and the underside of duct tape. Now my finger pads are plenty sticky, and smell like soapy duct tape. My new disability requires that I use this product for the rest of my life. I also find it comes in handy as a hair gel.

It is with great consternation and serious reservations that I now join the Unsticky Fingertip Association, or UFA (affectionately called “Ooffa”). Take care of your fingertips. Use lotion, avoid heavy lifting, and by all means stop counting through so much paper, or we’ll be seeing you at a support group meeting of the UFA soon.

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