Never have I been so keenly aware of the presence of my left hand. Up until a couple of months ago, my left hand was just a hand like any other hand. It was the mirror image, and slightly-less-utilized counterpart, of my right hand. But due to recent events, my left hand now seems to have its own life, much like the hand that tried to kill its former owner in Evil Dead 2. It does what it wants. It has its own identity. It has its own likes, dislikes, and moods. It must be treated with kid gloves and watched constantly.

I blame all this on the fact that on August 24, my boyfriend placed a very beautiful diamond engagement ring on that hand. I have never worn jewelry on my left hand before, and I’ve never had any occasion to watch where the hand went, or what it banged into, or whether it was properly manicured and moisturized. Suddenly, I am keenly aware of that hand and every bump, crunch, or nick it receives. In the past eight weeks, I have been repeatedly surprised by how little I know about an appendage that I’ve had in my possession for more than three decades.

I quickly learned that this hand tends to flail about when not closely attended to. It makes overly grand gestures as I speak, and as a result, it is prone to slamming into things. And judging by the two long scratches that appeared on the underside of the ring after only three days, the hand comes in contact with a lot of very rough, hard surfaces, the locations of which are still a mystery to me. But the hand knows where they are — and has returned to visit them several times since the initial scratches were first discovered.

My left hand tends to swell considerably between the hours of 11 p.m., when I go to bed, and 6:30 a.m., when I get up for work, making removal of the ring pre-shower next to impossible without some kind of lubrication. Then the hand shrinks considerably between 1 and 6 p.m., and the ring slides around and bangs into my computer keys as I type. One alcoholic beverage and I can pretty much forget about taking the ring off at all. Too many glasses of water and the hand threatens to jettison the ring, entirely unannounced.

And the left hand is not only fickle, but utterly spoiled. The first thing everyone wants to see these days is the damn hand. It’s gotten so used to all the attention that it has taken to reflexively sticking itself out for inspection whenever we encounter friends we haven’t seen recently. In fact, my left hand has begun expecting to be the center of the universe. My friends are not helping matters by acceding to its greedy, self-centered demands. "Look at me! Look at me!" it seems to scream, and my friends, unaware of the havoc they are wreaking, do its bidding.

The hand has even become a distraction to me. I’ll be driving along, minding my own business, when suddenly it starts posing, the ring starts flashing, I get mesmerized, and the next thing I know, I’m plowing through a red light.

Most disturbing of all, the hand is jealous. It has a keen interest in other women’s left hands, a subject in which I’ve never had more than a passing interest. But now, the hand wants to see what all the other hands are wearing. It will go so far out of its way to get a better look at another hand that I am occasionally forced to invade the personal space of another woman — a complete stranger — to achieve the view. Naturally, the hand makes sure to point out which other left hands have bigger rings, and smaller rings, and rings that could not possibly be of the same quality, and rings that bear a resemblance to its own, and rings that have an interesting design. (This inevitably leads, for reasons I don’t understand, to a close examination of the shoes of the woman in question.) It’s all highly distasteful, but the hand is like that. It has never heard of decorum. It only thinks about itself.

I’ve briefly considered simply moving the ring to my right hand, which has traditionally been a better-behaved and predictable appendage. The right hand is talented, considerate of others, and doesn’t flop around when I take my eyes off it for a second. It’s always where it’s supposed to be, and it doesn’t wander off. But social mores dictate that the left hand gets the ring, and so it appears I am stuck with the current state of affairs.

I’m hoping that this situation resolves itself soon. I’ve ridden the bus right past my stop several times in the past month while indulging the hand in its clandestine viewing of the other hands on board. Really, though, it’s my own fault. I’ve been giving in to the hand because it’s so rarely ever gotten to be in the limelight. But this is getting ridiculous. If things don’t change soon, I might start thinking that the guy in Evil Dead 2 — who cut off his hand with a chain saw — had the right idea.

Kris Frieswick and both of her hands can be reached at k.frieswick@verizon.net