Your hands weren't born cold

You rest your fingers on the back of someone's neck and they yelp. Everybody laughs. Your hands are always ice, you tell them, and your feet are worse. Socks to bed in the middle of summer. A sweater in a warm room while everyone else is fine in short sleeves. It turned into a joke, and the joke turned into you.

The joke had the wrong target. Nicotine can squeeze the small blood vessels that carry warmth out to your fingers and toes. Do that several times a day and the edges of you can learn to run cold. The cigarette dialed down your heat, then handed you a sweater.

As that squeeze lets up, warmth can make the whole trip again. Nobody throws you a party for it. There's no chart. Just your blood doing its rounds, out to the tip of every finger, down to the end of every toe. God's sending the warmth back out, all the way to the edges of you.

Test it on the next hand you shake. A friend, a neighbor, whoever's next in line. Hold on a beat longer than usual and feel for the warmth coming back. Warm hands are a small gift, and they're yours to give. Let the old joke retire. You get to be the warm one now.