It had never crossed my mind until I saw another one of those "busy person" illustrations in a magazine ad—the typical cliché of a harried guy doing about five different jobs at once.  They always showed an attractive but harrassed-looking young guy in a business suit, six arms going in all different directions, each hand involved with a different object—a phone, a notepad, a memo, a pen, a computer keyboard, etc.

Being the sort of person who can't help but daydream, I had to wonder what it would be like to be that way. How on earth would you work six different objects at once? I already have two hands and can't work two different objects at once. Of course, it was a stupid question because the art is symbolic. It's like the Vishnu religious art of six-armed deities. They're never relaxing at home with all their arms draped all over them while sitting on the couch, they're shown holding little objects of religious symbolism, because it's not meant to be taken literally.

Whenever you do see multiple arms intended literally, it's always deliberately made bug-like. Space creatures, no matter how humanoid, are only multi-armed if the arms are somehow hideous or mutant, or the creatures are made less human, with names like Grok, as they use their multiple arms to run various levers and dials at a spaceship's helm.

The most human interpretation I've yet found of being multiple-armed, the Spiderman saga in the famous comic books in which he accidentally grows six arms, has text describing the transformation as a hideous deformation. Spiderman is horrified by it and crippled in flight by the extra weight of six arms. He's upset and worried and uses all his energies to get rid of the extra arms, which is probably how someone might act in the real world if suddenly they had six arms.

But the text in the six-armed Spiderman comics never once mentions something that is immediately obvious to my eye—the six arms are beautiful!

They're identical to Spiderman's original arms, which are long, handsome and very well-muscled. They attach to the sides of his torso via four new and really big deltoid muscles, and because Spiderman's costume is only made for two arms, the four new arms rip through the fabric, blazingly naked in their muscular bare skin.

And they're definitely part of him, not just hang-ons. As Spiderman worries and paces and frets, the four big naked arms gesticulate expressively along with the original two, an instant extension of Spiderman's body language. In one illustration in the six-armed Spiderman saga, Spiderman stands leaning on a piece of furniture with his two original hands, and one of the new naked arms brings a new, handsome hand up so he can bury his face in it, which he does naturally and spontaneously, not at all repelled by it. He's got his Spiderman mask off, so the new hand is actually touching his face.

But is Spiderman amazed by the new, perfect and functional arms?

No time for that—he must worry and hurry to undo the effect of the serum that grew the arms.

Perhaps the artist who so beautifully sculpted those six arms was in a hurry to get rid of them as well—can you imagine the difference in the time it would take to draw two arms as opposed to six perfectly proportioned muscular male arms and hands, taking care to space them naturally so the effect remains credible, in every single frame in which Spiderman appears?

I just wish they'd let Spiderman take off his costume, maybe don some Speedos for a swim, and take some time to enjoy those six big guys. Who knows, the six arms might have also altered his genes, to be passed on to future generations of strapping, broad-shouldered, six-armed youths. I'd date one of them in a minute!