Stuff I Don't Get

If you know the answer to this riddle, leave a comment!

It’s easy to make a long list of stuff I can’t get through my thick skull. I can’t seem to grasp football rules. My eyes still glaze over when my husband starts explaining financial investing. I don’t get how someone ever decided eating oysters was a good plan. Were they starving to death? I still haven’t figured out who let the dogs out. How is it that, if every cell in our bodies regenerates every seven years, our bodies still deteriorate with age? What does IDK stand for, anyway? Nobody seems to know. Also, I can’t tell you how to get to Sesame Street.

That’s just a warmup.

The biggest thing I don’t get, though, has to do with how we all got here. And by “here,” I mean here, on this planet. A lot of people don’t believe they have a creator and I want to respect their opinion. But man, it’s hard. I’ve had evolution explained to me. I just don’t think I could ever muster the level of faith required to accept it.

The room I sit in as I write these words is filled with things. I can look around the room and see each item and I know it was made by someone—some highly intelligent, creative human. The books, the furniture, the photos, the lamp, the walls themselves—all designed and assembled by someone. I can’t fathom the hours involved in the invention of each individual item in this room, let alone add up all those hours.

Our world abounds with marvelous man-made creations. I don’t think anyone would argue with that point. I ask myself what is the most complicated item in this room? My sewing machine? My piano? My computer? Oh, surely, it’s my computer!

But wait. I’m in the room, too. And I’m kind of complicated. How can I believe I wasn’t created? I suppose one could argue that my creator is far more complicated still, yet I accept that HE doesn’t have a creator. So where did my creator come from? To say “He is eternal” sounds like a pat answer. How could someone have no beginning?

Well, I guess if I knew the answer to that, I could figure out football by now too. If my puny human mind can’t comprehend the size of our universe, how could it ever hope to understand the creator of said universe?

That’s where faith comes in.

As I see it, you will always be the most complicated thing in any room you enter. So—if all those less complicated things required a creator, how come you did not? If anyone wants to enlighten me, I’m open to your explanation. But I’ll warn you—whoever designed my skull made it good and thick.

What no one ever told you about artificial limbs

“Do I have any extra arms kicking around here?”

It’s not a question most wives hear from their husbands.

“How should I know?” I lovingly replied. “Don’t you keep track of them?”

Jon’s owned at least three prosthetic arms in the years since his original right one was amputated after a farm accident in 1995. People rarely see him using a prosthesis because he finds it more trouble than it’s worth for normal daily activities. But when performing serious outdoor work, his prosthesis gets at least as rigorous a workout as his muscles and joints—but with no natural healing component when it breaks.

Thus, a large Rubbermaid box of spare parts and attachments has been part of our household belongings for years. All are the work of Larry Lawson from Winnipeg, who has been Jon’s prosthetist all this time. Larry has built and rebuilt these arms, sometimes swapping out parts or beefing up strength to make them more endurable for jobs like pounding fence posts.

So, with his real arm suffering from over-use and his appointment with Larry still a week away, Jon was asking me a valid question. I’d “borrowed” a spare arm for a prop three years ago when the Prairie Players staged my short play, Sleeping with a One-Armed Man. He probably wondered if that one had ever been returned to the box.

All of this got me thinking how little we knew about prosthetics before they became part of our lives and how my readers might find the topic interesting. It’s a fascinating line of work. Part medical practitioner, part mechanic, part artist, part counsellor—prosthetists must also be business savvy, especially if they run their practice alone. They acquire an intimate knowledge of their client’s vestigial limb and they understand the changes that will come with atrophy. They need to grasp the client’s individual needs, know the type of work the artificial arm or leg will be expected to perform, and do their best to ensure a comfortable fit. Each is unique.

Whether or not a client still has their original elbow makes a colossal difference in the usefulness of a prosthetic arm, something that never would have occurred to us before. Jon does not. His prosthesis is completely mechanical, operated by shoulder movements.

A 1930's prosthetic arm

Although we’ve all seen impressive videos of myoelectric hands that seem even more sophisticated than the flesh and bone kind, the reality is that basic arm prosthetics have changed little since World War II. Advancements are being made every day, “somewhere, out there,” but for most amputees, cost puts them out of reach. State-of-the-art prosthetic replacements are complicated medical devices, powered by batteries and electronic motors, and they can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. For children, the difficulty of handling them—plus the child’s rapid growth—makes the investment impractical.

3D printing of limbs is gaining ground and reducing costs, so the future could look much brighter—for others, if not for Jon. For kids with missing fingers or even an entire hand, designs for these 3D printed prosthetics are readily available for free on the internet. They are not made to look like the original hand, but are produced in bright colors and patterned after super-heroes, dinosaurs, and Transformers. They’ve become so cool, able-bodied children wish they could have one.

Meanwhile, at our house, we’re convinced the most technologically advanced arm any human can ever invent will never be as complex as the kind God assembles in the darkness of a mother’s womb. We cannot out-create our own Creator. If we could, we’d have figured out by now how to regenerate lost limbs and they’d be superior to the ones we’re born with.

It kinda shoots a big ol’ hole in the theory of evolution. And further reinforces the notion that you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone.

Stay safe, everyone.