And I remember how I would look at the Cassidy players and wonder how they could move those fat fingers so quickly across the strings.
I wanted to have fingers like my aunt. Hers were long, slim and tapered, and could she play the piano! She played by ear - well, not really, she played with her fingers, but she played without sheet music. She just had to hear the first line or two of any song. Her fingers fairly flew over the ivories as she played the old favorites, including "Humoresque" or "Over the Waves." We could hum some of the songs, and she could play them. I guess she got her talent from the Cassidys and her fingers from another ancestor.
My grandmother had short fingers. Of course at the age of 90, she only stood four feet, 11 inches tall and weighed maybe 105 pounds. A fond memory is seeing her bent from the waist, cutting weeds from the yard with a paring knife. She never stooped down; she always bent from the waist, and no weed within sight was safe.
She could move faster bent over than most people could walking in an upright position. And even if she did have short fingers, she could make the best apple dumplings in the world. She always served them with a hot sauce flavored with nutmeg. I had been looking for a recipe like hers since her death in 1955, and would you believe, I now have it?
Her nephew, Kenneth Cassidy, who lives in Bath County, and his stepdaughter, Ann Estes, who lives in Winchester, mailed it to me. I can't wait to try it. Can taste those dumplings now!
But back to my fingers - I have been typing for more years than I care to count. I studied typing under Mrs. William Harding at Clark County High School and therefore got a real good background, and then I took another course in college. And my fat fingers work fairly well when it comes to typing.
However, I love to wear rings, more than one or two at a time, and when I put them on, I have no words to describe what those short fat fingers look like!
Now I learn that I can't blame the Cassidys for my fingers anymore. I can blame enzymes. It seems that scientists may have discovered the reason it's so hard to keep unwanted pounds off. They call it "lipoprotein lipases," or LPL. Supposedly scientists now are closing in on ways to control the action of this and other fat-related enzymes in the body.
Hope they can tell me how to rid my fingers of LPL.
And all of these years, I've been blaming the Cassidys!
