I grew up sort of feeling like an outcast; not because I had a huge gap between my front teeth (I could whistle with my mouth closed), and not because I was the weird little arty kid that took three hours to get home on rainy days (because I had the gargantuan chore of saving every earthworm that was going to meet its fate on the road after the storm passed). I was born with what is called "toe thumbs" and every time someone noticed my toes, er, I mean thumbs, they would make a really, really, really big fuss about it. And it is/was usually a statement like, "Oh my God! Look at your thumbs! They're soooo weird! They look like toes! Have they always been like that?" (No, one night I took a magic pill that I found under a spotted mushroom and when I woke, not only did I discover that I could yodel in German, but I also aquired toes for thumbs.)You could imagine the humiliation and embarrassment when it would draw the attention of passer byers who needed to see this anomoly. I actually got to a point where I had forgotten what my thumbs looked like because I kept them neatly tucked in my hands, hiding behind my folded fingers. I think now a days, therapists call this "disassociation". Whatever. It was a shameful waste of energy. If only I had known that I would grow to be absolutely proud of my "toe thumbs" and will show them off to anyone willing to take the risk and look. Go ahead and have a whole hearted look.
To add fuel to the fire, I also was a thumb sucker when I was a child, and am adament that it is a genetic trait that runs on my father's side of the family. When my son was 5 months old, he decided to not only wean himself from breast feeding, but become a thumb sucker on the same day. Oh yeah, and he also got a bunch of new teeth that day, and all of this occurred while on a short holiday in Winnipeg in a hotel. Nice. There we were with a screaming baby with raw gums, and a mother with engorged, time-bomb breasts in a hotel room. In retrospect, I feel really bad for whoever was in the next room. (In retrospect, I feel bad for whoever was in the same room with my son and I.) When I got home from that trip I went to visit my parents and asked which of them sucked their thumb when they were a baby and my father sheepishly admitted to the habit as a boy. I knew it. Thumb sucking genetics. So, my son sucked his thumb for years, and I let him. I knew how comforting it was, but I didn't want him to be one of those kids that sucks his thumb in school. I never did. I was a closet thumb sucker but I wasn't sure whether Alexander would be able to handle that. So I pulled out the big guns, that being my toe thumbs. I told Alexander that my thumbs didn't always look the way they do; that they actually got smaller and smaller from years of thumb sucking. It worked. He stopped; cold turkey.
Fortunately, Alexander forgot about that fable because I had another one that I had told him, and this one has seemed to stick. Or at least I'm still sticking to the belief that Alexander still believes this to be the truth....perhaps he's humouring me. I told Alexander that I was born without thumbs at all, that I just had four fingers on each hand. I said that in the same hospital where I was born, someone else was born with an extra set of "big toes" on their feet, resulting in that child having12 digits. It was easy math for the doctors, who immediately gave me the extra toes on my thumbs and all families were satisfied. He really takes a good long hard look at my thumbs sometimes. I think he's checking for scars from stitching.....
So, I have grown to love my stubby little toe thumbs. And interestingly enough, one of my dearest friends, who is also an artist, has the exact same thumbs as me. And when I was in the Fine Arts Faculty in university, I saw many, many toe thumbs. Perhaps having toe thumbs is an art thing. I jokingly say that ballet dancers have ugly feet and artists have ugly hands, but maybe there's a bit of truth to that. I wonder what da Vinci's thumbs looked like, or van Gogh's, or Heironymous Bosch's! I bet you any money Heironymous Bosch had toe thumbs! I'll never know, but I know that my toe thumbs are here to stay, so I might as well love 'em 'cause they're all I've got.
And if you want to stop me on the street to see my thumbs, I don't mind, but be prepared, because I might ask to see one of your body parts.
