What,
Oh, what
Is the point of this screw?
And if I unscrew it,
What does it do?
Strange,
So strange
That I find it right here.
It's stuck in my middle,
The purpose ain't clear.
I twist
And twist,
But it keeps unscrewing.
Can anyone see
What this thing
Is doing?
-B.C. Byron
It’s uncanny (that means unbelievably weird) that the bellybutton does indeed look like a screw. Have you ever noticed that? Take a look at it right now and you’ll see what I mean. You may need a mirror to get a good enough view to see the fleshy slots, just like a phillips head screw. When I was little, my brothers had me convinced that my bellybutton was the very screw that was holding my bottom in place. Sometimes they would threaten to unscrew it, which terrified me. I imagined my belly button being really long and going all the through my middle at an angle, down to the tailbone where it fit into a threaded hole to keep my bum firmly in place. I was small and not yet very logical, so I didn’t really think about the fact that such a screw would have to go through the middle of my stomach and would make a hole for my stomach contents to leak out.
Now that I’m grown up, I know that’s all a bunch of hogwash. It doesn’t make sense to have just one screw holding my entire bottom in place. It also doesn’t make sense for it to go right through the middle of my stomach. Surely there at least 4 screws there, one on each corner of my bottom. The real mystery is, where are the other screws hidden? Are they under the belly skin, or is my bottom fastened through the hips? I’ve poked around there and can’t seem to find them. Let me know if you find those additional screws. If you do find them, please DO NOT put a screwdriver there, or anything else for that matter.
Knee caps are another body part that’s mysterious to me. It’s a bone, but it’s not fastened in that well. When your leg is bent, the knee caps stay firmly in place. If you straighten your leg out, you can (very gently) wiggle the knee cap around. What is the purpose of that? Imagine if parts of your skull could wiggle around like that. What if your shoulder blades could slide around when you stand up straight (maybe they do and I just need someone else to reach back there and try it for me)? Also, why don’t we have elbow caps that wiggle around? Elbows are, after all, the knee of the arm, or maybe the knee is the elbow of the leg? And why do we have armpits, but no legpits? Why don’t our legpits need deoderant like our armpits, or am I the only one who is not using deoderant in my leg pits (or whatever they’re called)… I’m getting lost in this conversation now, and you probably are too. I’ll just end by saying that our bodies are fascinating squishy machines, full of mystery. Let’s take good care of our bodies and learn all we can about them.
Now I’m off to research knee caps and to find out if I need to buy legpit deoderant. Good night.
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