Why It's Time to Stop Wearing Mittens: A Manifesto

Mittens keep your hands warm in the most awkward way possible. They have all the functionality of five fingered gloves, save for the functionality part. Their only draw is the empathy they grant the wearer when they experience, firsthand, what life is like after a thresher accident. As a species, we are designed for fingers. Small paddles in place of our normally agile appendages is a direct violation of the evolutionary law in place since time immemorial. If one day, while out about your average pedestrian business -- buying a chainsaw, motorcycle, duct tape and video camera, for example -- you happened upon a man who had one giant, flat finger and one regular sized thumb, you would be aghast. Why is he like that, you would wonder. What happened to him? Was it a birth defect? Industrial acid accident? Irradiated penguin bite? Whatever the answer, you would come away from the experience knowing one thing and one thing only: That man is forced to live as a mono-fingered monstrosity for the remainder of his days. And you do not envy him.

This guy is more formidable than literally everyone in mittens.

And yet here you are; buying mittens. You are paying somebody to wind back your evolutionary clock a few million years. Why? There have to be some upsides. Let's examine them:

The mitten is very warm. This is true, and it deserves at least that recognition. It is warmer than a glove... in the same way that four naked men in one sleeping bag are much warmer than four men in four separate sleeping bags. But six nights out of seven, we'll choose the separate bags, thank you (Sunday is God's day off; everything is fair game). But, much like the aforementioned Bag O' Dudes, the warmth of the mitten inevitably comes with an expense: sweaty, greasy, disgusting digits. They slide past each other in a sick, squicky and twisted ballet that leaves no victor but shame. But mittens are built to combat cold, right? Screw dignity, function and tactile pleasantness; this is about survival. Mittens protect you from snow, so any price is fair.

Snow is man's 19th greatest enemy, under "Salmonella" and right above "smothered by cat."

Except they don't.

If you pack a snowball with a mitten and throw it, you are only delivering, at best, 80 percent of that snow to the back of your stupid sister's dumb head. Likewise with the next snowball, and the next, until what you're left with is a snow-encrusted flipper in place of a once useful, noble, purposeful hand. A mitten is to snow as a pimp is to hos; it always takes its cut. With a glove, you can wiggle fingers, stretch the hand or use your free digits to carefully wipe away the accumulation. With a mitten, the best you can do is dully wave your frost-encaged limbs and hope that the rescuers realize you are in need of help, and not just really stoked to see them.

Keeping children safe from the dangers of fingers?

Babies. A baby with mittens on is a fine baby. Look at their moronic little hands. They are basically clubs. Sure, they manage the occasional grip, but that's like a cat getting one claw stuck in a blanket: It is an accident of the body that only serves to confuse and enrage them. A baby's hands do nothing but slap and paw at the things they want, because they do not understand there are ways to acquire necessities aside from hitting (kicking, for example). In short, mittens are fine for a baby because they have little to no effect on their dexterity, and in fact may beneficially limit their presumptuously grasping fingers.

What, were you gonna type a letter? You're a damn baby.

Another possible demographic for the mitten: Dolphins, or possibly Dolphin-men.

The mitten represents pure, unadulterated hydrodynamics. It is only logical to make the connection between mittens and the dolphin. The dolphin can swim quickly primarily because of its thick, paddle-like fins. Fins that look suspiciously like mittens. The argument that dolphins are the descendants of early humans who simply couldn't give up their mittens is a highly logical one, regardless of how many times the scientific community refuses to publish our papers.