March 21, 2009

A casual stroll through a supermarket aisle, a glimpse of a manicured garden or a row of neatly parked cars hardly holds one attention anymore. ‘Nice, neat and tidy’ has become increasingly synonymous with morality, from the perspective that the more things are the same, the better they are. When they are not busy telling us how we don’t fit in, marketers try to convince us that they have the product to slot us right in.

On the opposite side of the spectrum, others sell us ways to make us stand out. Some will go to great lengths to be different. On a subway train or a bus, the eyes may be given the feast of a visual cacophony of tattoos and piercings in unique places and orientations. When the ambition behind those marks is no longer there, a clean slate can be found with a laser beam or a plastic surgeon’s knife.

Holly McRann was born different from most of us. Her uniqueness was not bought from a store; it cannot be turned into a trend. Not out of choice but chance, her left hand is special. When fads recycle themselves, Holly will still be wholly as she was, since the day she joined everyone else on Earth, approximately 26 years ago.

Upon first impressions one would be hard pressed to notice any difference; for some of her colleagues, months or a year can go by before anyone ever picks up on it. She was kind enough to share insights into life that are funny, profound and eminently priceless in these times of mono-blanded homogeneity or patterned self-ostracism.

HW: Tell me about this unique feature of yours. Have you ever spent time thinking about it?

HW: You mentioned that you thought more about it in high school, but that wasn’t the first time that you were self-aware that you were a little different from everybody else, was it?  Was there a point when you thought that, “Hey, I’m ‘A’, and everyone else is ‘B’.”?

 HM: I don’t think so. I think growing up, even during elementary school, when people saw my hand, they [would ask], “Oh, what happened?” I would say, “Oh, I was born this way.” But I never really felt different. Even in high school, I didn’t felt I was different; it wasn’t like I was ‘A’ and they were ‘B’ - they were capital ‘A’ and I was small ‘a’! We were the same but there was a small difference.

HW: Out of interest, have you ever looked it up or tried to find other perspectives? Did anyone ever say it was a sign of anything in particular?

 HM: I thought you might ask me this and then I thought, “Why haven’t I looked this up?” I’ve questioned my parents and they just said that it was a birth defect, so I think because of that it wasn’t anything that I could have researched.

There was [once] an option for me to do surgery, where I could get my toes removed off of my foot and placed onto my hand. My parents had the option of doing this when I was a baby; they said they would give me that choice. I remember it being a discussion at one point in my life, but I never really considered it because the purpose of the surgery would have been to make me more ‘normal’ but I don’t think that would have made me more ‘normal’; I think it would have just been a person with toes for fingers!

I think if somebody said you could get surgery you could take somebody else’s fingers, then I might consider that, if just for practicality like when typing on a computer; to make life a little bit easier.

HW: Some people born differently will not be as concerned about their own quality of life; instead they might consider if they might pass it to their children. Do you ever have those kinds of questions?

HM: Actually, I went to the doctor not too long ago and I asked that very question. I don’t know if it would stop me from having kids but thinking about if I could ‘cause’ something in a child, well, there would be certain things I would have to think about. I would have to mentally prepare myself. I would be shaping a person’s life in a certain way.

Then again, it didn’t negatively shape my life. I consider myself a fairly outgoing person; it’s never really stopped me from doing anything. I probably wouldn’t be choosing an activity where I would have to be using my fingers. I’m still able to do things and tying back to your original question – having children – I think it would cause a different path for that child and I don’t think it would necessarily be a bad one; it would shape them into the person that they are.

HW: There are obvious limitations on what you are able to do. How have you adapted?

HM: Because I was born with, it was a matter of “this is what you got, so deal with it.”

HW: Have you ever tried to hide your difference from others?

HM: Growing up, yes. I don’t think I found that I had to hide it; that was a coping mechanism I needed to do at that time because I wasn’t comfortable in my own skin; it didn’t necessarily have anything to do with my hand. But now that I’m older, I don’t feel the need to hide it in any way. Honestly, by choosing teaching as a profession, I think it’s the opposite – I’m in front of a group and I’m teaching people how to do volleyball; I’m using my hand in a public setting which is the opposite of where I would have seen myself when I was ten or twelve years old.

The more that I became closer with people, as they saw no difference in me, I realized that there wasn’t that big of a difference. At this point now, I don’t see any difference. I go about my day like anyone else would. When I stumble upon something, like a typing test, I might think, “Oh yeah, right. I’m not so suited for this.”

The other day a student asked me, “What’s wrong with your hand?” I thought, “What do you mean? I’ve been teaching you how to hit the ball, so how could you not have noticed this? Are you really not paying attention to me?” I’ve always thought that it was obvious; it’s just shocking to me that it’s not.

HW: Being treated differently can provide a certain sensibility; say in dealing with life, relationships or conflict. Would you say that being treated differently or having this difference has provided a certain insight?

HW: Do you think the fact that people don’t treat you that differently suggests that they are willing to accept a certain level of difference?

HM: For some people, that’s for sure. For others they just feel awkward and don’t know what to do. For instance, I will go through security at an airport where you have to do your fingerprints. They would do your thumb and index finger, so I naturally gave them my right hand. Then they would ask for the other hand and as I would show them, they would just look puzzled at me; for that moment you could just see the wheels turning – “What do I do? What do I do? What do I do?” Then they will say, “Ok, we’ll take what we can get.”

When I first started dating [my husband], I don’t think he had known about my hand right away. I remember one time he went out of his way to mention something. He said, “I don’t know how you’re going to handle this… I don’t think I could ask you.” He was so nervous and I asked him, “Did you used to be a girl or something?” I thought it was something personal about him, but he said that he didn’t know if he should have said anything about my hand. I told him that I never really thought about it and asked him what he wanted to know about it. He said, “Oh! No, I didn’t want to know anything about it; I want you to know that I’m comfortable with it and that it’s not something you need to hide from me.”

Having him, and knowing that he was comfortable with it – if anything ever came up, he was just sensitive to it and he just ‘pre-thought’. When I first started teaching, he would ask me, “What did the kids think about your hand?” Having someone so close and so aware of it helped me.

A big thanks goes out to Holly McRann for taking the time to talk with the Foto Geeks.