Knuckle Crush
I didn’t start cracking my knuckles until my sophomore year of high school.
Before that, people who cracked their knuckles were either:
a.) annoying
b.) tough.
I remember watching a “Bill Nye the Science Guy” episode in one of my classes and it explained why we hear the cracking sound and why we SHOULDN’T crack our knuckles because of something about fluid and bones.
I heeded that message until my sophomore year. Why did I abandon it you ask? Because of my crush.
No, he wasn’t a knuckle cracker (or was he?) who I was trying to be like – he just made me nervous.
I picked up the habit as a way of calming myself around him sometimes or just to look cool. Now, I do it to pass time (and still look cool; my idea of cool is so not normal).
Crushes can make people do strange and new things. I don’t think he picked up any interesting habits. I never saw him smoking in the corner, molding clay busts, or biting his fingernails…
So when I asked him if I did anything unusual during that time period…he said no. So clearly this isn’t an, ‘everybody does this, welcome to the club’ type thing. So why did it happen to me?
It happened because everything means so much more to me.
High school crushes seem so insignificant in the grand scheme of things, especially if it doesn’t get past the crush phase, but it still finds a way to linger on.
I now have this annoying and possibly unhealthy need to crack my knuckles, something I may do for the rest of my life and it’s all because of a boy.
It makes me smile. Those little things that happen in your life, that were so big at one time, suddenly become little quirks and habits. Only you get to know that.
Every part of your being, now and later, is not just you, but those you’ve encountered.
Point in case, everything, every insignificant interaction or momentous occasion (good or bad) will be more than that. It will manifest itself to you in so many ways, and all you can do is treasure it and make it a part of you. I don’t know…maybe that’s my philosophy.