Alligator Purse

Winter brings on some interesting moments.

Snowfall in Alabama. Slick roadways and windows that need deicing. Visions of bowls of hot chili and late night mugs filled with hot chocolate that is festooned with bobbing marshmallows. Scarves and mittens. Winter wraps and comfortable evenings by the fireside.

Winter also brings on another moment... for me, winter is an experiment in which hand and body lotion can keep enough moisture in my skin to keep me from declining on Darwin's evolutionary scale into something... well... with scales.

I don't recall anywhere in my studies of zoology or anatomy that there were bottles and jugs of Lubriderm or Nivea anywhere nearby. Frankly, lacking opposable thumbs, would any of the amphibian or reptilian ancestor set have the ability to even remove the safety seal from the packaging?

And if they somehow gnawed it off, would they even be able to successfully apply the lotion to their bodies in a way that actually eased that dry, scaly appearance? I'm thinking that rubbing lotion on with a sandpapery surface wouldn't help at all. Not only does it not help the existing gross looking skin, but the sandpaper would make the lotion into a gooey skin filled mess that just makes me sick to think about.

Now, I have officially tried a gazillion different preparations, potions, serums and lotions which all claim to ease the dry, cracked and alligator like appearance of my hands. None last for very long and seem to just disappear into the cracked surface immediately, which begs the question... am I applying this correctly? Do I rub it onto my skin or am I supposed to immerse my hands in buckets of this goo and just leave them there for the alleged healing to take place?

If so, that would impede what little work I actually manage to do each day. Did you know you can't turn on the washer with a bucket on your hand? Who knew...

Of course, if you are both flexible and dextrous, you could simply perform the task of turning on appliances with your toes. Since I have a stacking washer and dryer, the gymnastic portion of this task would certainly be deserving of a gold medal or at least a silver.

And if you employ your feet for the routine tasks normally covered by dry, scaly hands, it is only reasonable that in short order your feet would also look like your amphibian and reptilian ancestry was showing.

I concede that this is the only season of the year in which the idea of mankind emerging from the primordial ooze even seems possible. The scaly patches on my body seem to hark back to an earlier and most decidedly primitive tie in to the historical account of the rise of man.

It all reminds me of a kid's song my sister and I sang as a child. Even as I think about it, I'm hoping that I am not selected on the basis of my scaly hands to be the donor for the alligator purse... I'm thinking that would be sort of gross. And I'm not exactly sure how the lady with said alligator purse would be helpful but here we go:

Miss Lucy had a baby
She named him Tiny Tim
She put him in the bathtub
To teach him how to swim.

He drank up all the water
He ate up all the soap
He tried to eat the bathtub
But it wouldn't go down his throat.

Call, call the Doctor!
Call, call the nurse!
Call, call the lady with the alligator purse!

It never failed to make us laugh helplessly.

Oh well, it's time to put on more lotion and make at least an attempt to tame the savage beast coming out in my hands.