My fingers have big knuckles, and they’ve always had big
knuckles. Tracings of my childhood hands
revealed bumps where my friends had little arcs. The third finger of my right
hand has developed a particular characteristic. It takes a slight jog to the
right at the first interphalangeal joint, the joint that most people use to
knock on doors. It has done this for years, but only recently did I realize the
true origin of this pattern: writing.
I grew up in the pre-computer age, the time when we took
notes and wrote assignments with pens, pencils, and papers. Everything was done
that way, from book reports to math problems to short essays. Longer papers
were cranked out on typewriters, but usually from a draft written on yellow
legal paper. We also wrote personal letters in what we called long hand, and we
addressed Christmas cards the same way, not with computer labels. I don’t know how my third finger would be shaped if I had
grown up with computers doing most of my writing. I do know that a writing
implement fits perfectly in the crook that exists there now.
As a piano
teacher, I have a pencil in my hand most of my teaching hours, at the ready to
mark errors or suggestions. I trade the pencil out for a pen when I write down
the week’s assignment in a practice book. I've been known to demonstrate simple piano patterns with one of
these implements still in my hand, a minor gymnastic feat.
When I was growing up, I loved to visit Tony, the Italian
shoemaker. Another sign of my age is that we actually did get our shoes
repaired in those days, and I was glad to be the errand girl who dropped them
off or picked them up at Tony’s shop. I loved the smell of leather and metal,
and I loved the conversations Tony and I had about classical music. He was a
first generation immigrant who grew up playing the violin and attending
concerts. He could tell me about the famous musicians who performed in our
local theatre, since transformed into a movie house.
By the time I knew Tony, he could no longer play the violin.
He would hold up his hands and tell me that they could no longer move around
the fingerboard. They were now shaped like his tools, and they had grown
inflexible with age.
This is what happens
to all of us. Not only do our hands grow like our tools, but other muscles of
the body do as well. Muscles shift effort from one to another with the prime
purpose of keeping us upright and mobile. When we are chronically out of
balance, our muscles adapt by growing around the imbalance so we can continue
to function. Our students’ muscles are growing with their skeletons as well, a
process that goes on until they are in their early 20s. Lucky for them, young
people are flexible. This is especially true for females who become more
flexible after puberty. Still, how they move and work with tools will have an impact
on how their muscles grow.
Young athletes are now encouraged to play more than one
sport for this very reason. An athlete who sticks to one sport will tend to
develop a muscular pattern that is most effective for that sport. An athlete
who cross-trains has the opportunity to develop a greater variety of muscular
patterns.
Musicians generally specialize, excepting those
who learn to play more than one instrument well. For this reason we will tend to develop patterns
that assure success on one instrument, and that instrument becomes our primary tool. Pianists adapt not only to the keyboard of the piano but also to the variety of benches. The young girl in the cartoon below is working on a revolving pedestal stool, and she is challenged to fit well on what appears to be a small sitting surface. Replacing her stool with a bench could prove very helpful, as long as she doesn't take her former compensations to the new tool.
