One small aspect of everyday life, though, struck me when I was meeting a group of friends recently for a park hang, finally free of winter’s figure-swallowing parka silhouettes, scarves, and mittens. What do I do with my hands? I fretted internally, trying to pull together what felt like a “normal” physical posture as I approached the Sloth I can’t ADL today #otlife shirt and by the same token and group, but feeling more like one of those Ikea artist’s sculptures with the posable limbs. After a year of socializing and working mostly via Zoom meeting, I was used to keeping my hands squarely out of frame and not thinking all that much, if at all, about my body language; suddenly, I felt like a sixth-grader at my first middle-school dance. If this predicament is in part about aesthetic awkwardness, though, it’s also about re-adjusting to a world in which touch is often centered in casual social interactions.
