I play the clarinet regularly. I often have calluses on my fingers (the exact location differs depending on which type of clarinet I play the most during any one period in time) and I keep my fingernails very short because I had a clarinet teacher who said to do so.
On these rather small, slightly pudgy hands only my thumbs and one of the eight other fingers don’t have thin white scars on them. You might think I’ve done more manual labor than I have, but nope. We had a lot of kittens when I was a kid, and they took a while to learn to retract their wee little claws.
I also find it interesting that you can tell I drive myself a lot, and perhaps that I’m single, by the fact that my left hand has a lot more freckles on it than the right.
The only mildly interesting thing about my hands* is that the nails are always bitten very short. I can be kind of highly strung, so I guess that makes sense.
*Sidenote: Actually, probably the most mildly interesting thing about my hands is that my thumbs are two totally different shapes - the right one is very short and fat, while the other is long and thin. This led to many arguments when I wanted to thumb wrestle with my left hand.
Not the case with Holmes, but modern corners can really tell what your actual life has been life from an exam. How the bones wear and so on, tells a lot.
Vet tech with the scarred scratches on hands and forearms to prove it. Short nails and small girly hands, though fingers are a bit sausage-like due to my extra weight. Smooth and not dry skin, though. My very oily skin and hand washing a lot seem to get along fine. Lucky me.
re OP:
Chewed up hands are a mark of an amateur attempting something.
My grubs are splattered in paint. Because I do not know how to paint. Real painters wear the white clothes to exhibit that they do NOT splatter themselves with paint.
I noticed that I developed a rather thick callus on one hand, on the palm just below the pinky. It took awhile to guess at the cause - carting around an infant carrier. #thuglife. I can tell people that I got it from kung fu if they ask.
Nails are evidence of anxiety and compulsive behavior. A few scars for character, especially one across the knuckle of a middle finger, evidence of a crazy dig with poor impulse control.
My left hand belies my popping off the wrist bone five years ago.
My right hand, nothing.
What an interesting OP!
I am currently a Manager/Pizza maker. I have work as a chef/cook/bartender for the better part of 38 years. My hand look pretty damn good for being 55 (if i do say so myself).
Over the years they have taken their fair share of abuse:
- You can barely notice the scar from a Z-plasty to repair several tendons on my left hand. (defense wound from a mugging 25 years ago)
- The nails on my right index and middle finger are finally normal looking after having been run through and alternator belt pully 12 years ago. FUCK that hurt. I had to work as bartender the next day so had to scrub nasty black grease off of wound on crushed fingers with solvent to bandage. I used superglue to hold things together while they healed. lost both nail a week later.
- Right pinkie sticks out a bit from having a “Boxers Break”. I waited too long before seeking medical attention so they had to rebreak and reduce the fracture.
Most all off my hand mishaps have occurred away from work. I don’t want to jinx myself (as I work in about an hour from now) but I rarely cut or injure myself in the kitchen.
Guitar player here; right handed. Keep nails on left hand trimmed short, short, short so I can hold down strings for chords. Keep nails on right hand medium length and trimmed for strength (not shape) so I can pick with just natural nails (though most of the time I flat pick anyway for a bigger, more consistent sound.) Finger tip calluses on left hand, not so on right hand. And since sometimes I strum with the back of the right hand nails, I haven’t bothered with nail polish for about two decades. A love a good pedicure, though!
I would kill for bigger, stronger hands so I could bar chords better and reach across the guitar neck easier.
My business usage is mainly keyboarding.
My wrists got stronger when I started using free weights.
I’m a 66-year-old female. My hands show it more than my face.
Beat me to it by a few minutes. My left hand fingernails are cut as short as possible. On my right hand, they grow about 3/8" long. I take long breaks from playing (sometimes years), but my fingernails are always kept like that.
My hands and nails suggest I work on a landscaping crew.
Which I do, except it’s a one-person crew that does the outdoor chores for Jackmannii Estates.
“Pick that okra!” “Yes’m.”
Is that true? That those grease stains won’t come out? Because every mechanic and wood shop teacher I’ve ever met has those stains and I always think, “Christ, dude, buy some Fels-Naptha.”
My fingernails are kept short and unpolished. I type all day and I got annoyed trying to keep up a manicure so I just quit polishing my fingernails. I also have quite a few burn scars on my hands. I like to bake and I inevitably will burn myself taking something out of the oven.
“Watson, you haven’t decided where to take the talking- machine horn for repair.”
I was engaged in reading a medical treatise on house-call conversions of treadle-operated sewing machines to cataract-scalpel sharpeners. I looked up at my friend in astonishment, remembering just in time not to clamp my teeth closed on my tongue, for my jaw had fallen open as he gave voice to his startling communication. Only the week before I had had to stitch my own tongue to stanch its copious bleeding when he had surprised me with a similar astonishing deduction. I shall inform my readers of this case, which I tentatively have entitled The Giant Rat of Sumatra and the Trousers Fly when Holmes decides enough time has passed for the principals to have returned to Sumatra.
“Good heavens, Holmes!” I ejaculated. “How in the name of all that is wonderful could you possibly know that? I didn’t speak to you of it and I have not yet searched the talking-machine repair-shop advertisements in any of the 236 daily newspapers I had to schlep home for you earlier today!”
Homes chuckled. “My dear Watson, it was no great feat, I assure you. When I see you enter our sitting room with your head bent onto your right shoulder and you slowly and carefully seat yourself so your neck doesn’t jar, I could have hazarded a guess. But when you rubbed your sore neck with your right hand, I could clearly see your right thumbnail had taken the shape of a wedge. So my guess became certainty and I knew you were playing your phonograph records with your thumbnail again, with your neck bent to hear them, which, of course, means the reproducer, along with the needle clamp, remains separated from the horn.”
“How absurdly simple!” I cried.
“As usual. But I hear a foot on the stair. Let us hope it is attached to a leg this time.”
I worked on heavy duty trucks most of my life. Using a stiff brush on my hands with regular bar soap would get them spotless. I might not be able to get a small amount of residue under my fingernails. The stiff brush is the only thing that would really work.
Yeah, it’s the under the nail grease that I can never get out if I’ve been working on a part of the car with old grease, the really black stuff. I too use a really stiff brush and start off with a pumice based hand cleaner. Then wash again with a different brush and a normal bar soap.
I spent all day today rebuilding a rear suspension and have now cleaned up to head to work tomorrow. Left hand looks really good, right hand has a black smudge under the thumb nail and two fingernails that I can’t get out.
Of course, wearing nitrile gloves would solve all of this but my hands sweat so much in those things that I can’t stand it.
Before you start disassembling the crankcase, run your fingers over a cake of old bar soap. Really dig in. Try to get as much soap as possible under your fingernails. Three hours later, when you wash up, no black moons!
I don’t have manicured nails and I bite my cuticles.
I’m am currently a 32 yo stay at home mom with three small children
I occasionally quilt and I maintain 9 aquariums in my home
Lots of small burn and cut scars due to years working on electronics, computers and soldering. A few more from working as a cook in a bar. A boxers fracture of the right hand. Knuckles generally a bit swollen due to a touch of arthritis, some repetitive-stress damage (my right hand makes a gristly crunchy-popping sound every time I make a fist.) Slight bulge on my left wrist from an untreated fracture. Pronounced inward curve of both index and left middle finger, not sure why.
Bitten fingernails.
Torn cuticles.
Currently unemployed, but mostly worked as a bouncer and freelance computer tech for the past 15 years