Reinhardt Calluses

With some free time on my hands, I can ponder changes to my body as I age. One that comes to mind is that during the first 30 or so years of my life, beginning in the first grade or so, I developed a large callus in the area of the middle finger where I grasped a pencil or pen. At Reinhardt, pencils were our primary tool; we stood in line at the pencil sharpener at the front of the room. On occasion, we stood at the blackboard with a piece of chalk doing our letters and numbers. The school janitor would cart off those chalk-filled erasers and clean them using a special machine down in his workroom.


Summertime was barefoot time for me. My heel calluses today are tiny remnants of those I developed as a child.



During the last 25 years or so, I have lost my middle finger callus and developed a new one at the bottom left of my right hand.