You can kind of see it in the picture that I used for this most recent Wordless Wednesday, but I have what is called brachydactyly — an inherited condition that causes unusually shortened fingers (and in my case, it appears to be just my fingers that are affected, as my feet and toes seem fine). My form of it is not as severe as some people’s, which is why I “got away” with people thinking that I simply had small hands as I grew up… and a lot of people, even now, simply think that I have small fingers and hands. And although that’s the case, my fingers and hands — mainly my fingers — are abnormally small, especially in proportion to what they should be. The type that I appear to have, or the one that appears to most line up with the structuring of my hand, is Sugarman’s. I don’t completely fall in line with any of the listed types of brachydactyly even though you can tell that I have it, but of the various types, Sugarman’s brachydactyly is the one that most resembles my hand size. And again, I don’t have it as severely as some people… but I do have “small hands”.

Some people have also gone a step further than that and have described my hands as “small, weird hands”.

I’ve actually found that you can get away with more being, or passably presenting as, female, and being short or small. I didn’t find out until I was an adult that there was actually an explanation for my hands being the way that they were (and I didn’t even find this out until I found out why I could not adequately follow nail polish tutorials… of all of the reasons to find something like that out, huh?), let alone that it was an anomaly.

I’m sure some of you can imagine the relief that I felt finding out that there was a scientific reason for this.