What Are All My Bones For?

Bones originate in the body. They are made of calcium, old chalk, and the sound of wooden cubes rattling around in a jar. Even if you’ve never heard of bones before, you likely have several. Let’s meet them.

Teeth are bones that you have to clean because they are the only bones we can see. If you see other bones, this could mean several things: you need to consult a doctor (broken bone), you are currently consulting a doctor (X-ray), or you are watching a procedural crime drama starring Emily Deschanel and David Boreanaz (“Bones”).

Your skull, or cranium, keeps your brain inside your head. If it weren’t for your skull, your brain would come apart into little worms and explore the rest of your body. Medically speaking, this is what people mean when they say that someone is thinking with their heart, or crotch, etc. Although not its primary purpose, your skull can also be used to go, “Knock, knock, anybody home?”

Your spine is where you store all your clickity-clack. As you grow older, this will spread to your knees, elbows, neck, wrists, jaw, and socio-political ideology. Spines are also for posture, and posture is something for adults to constantly yell at children about. Not much authority in saying, “Sit down, wiggly.”

Your ear has so many bones in it, or maybe only three. The ones we know of for sure are colloquially referred to as the hammer, the anvil, and the stirrup. You may think that these sound like parts of a car engine, and you are correct. Ears are the automobiles of the face. You can hot-wire a brain with a Q-tip, which is why they don’t want you sticking them in your ears.

Your finger bones, also called phalanges, serve many purposes: hitchhiking, signalling approval, signalling disapproval, signalling jazz, waving “Ta-ta,” being a fancy tea drinker, having a point to make, asking for the check, making a sign of peace, making a sign of war, making a sign that you’re doing O.K., making a sign that actually you have a fiancé and he’s going to be here any minute now, making a sign that you have a passing knowledge of “Star Trek,” calling someone a loser, giving a knuckle sandwich, and counting.

A skeleton is a gathering of the bones. Bones will typically get together for festive events such as Halloween, pirate-themed parties, and morbid Christmas. A gathering of skeletons is known as “catacombs” in France. In the United States, it is known as C-SPAN.

The places where bones connect are called joints. The places where bones disconnect are called doints. Ha-ha, just kidding. That was an example of how to use the funny bone in your arm. The only other purpose of your funny bone is to make you go “Yee-ow!” like a cartoon character.

Feet bones are for kicking and shins are for being kicked. Shoulder bones grew out of a cultural need to signal that you don’t know something or that you love this song but are too embarrassed to dance full out. Your ribs are for protecting your lungs while you are alive and for playing like a xylophone when you are dead.

Our bones will likely outlive the rest of our corporeal form by tens if not hundreds of years. Future archeologists may use them to understand our current ways of living, examining these biological maps of our collective experiences. Either that, or they’ll just watch reruns of “Bones.” ♦