My Three Thumbs

In the maternity ward of a city hospital in Camden, New Jersey, a nurse handed my mother a blue-blanketed baby.

The 24-year-old woman with her damp hair brushed back and those sweet, timid brown eyes hugged me to her chest.  She cradled me securely with her left arm and explored this new prize – her second son – with her right.  She stroked my cheek, my neck and my shoulder.  Down my arm she went, past the crook of my little elbow, my forearm and my tiny right hand.

She felt my fingers as my hand reflexively grabbed at hers.  One, two, three, she counted, breathing slowly, exhausted from the lack of sleep and the physical exertion.  Four, five, six.

Six?  Wait a minute. That can’t be right.  Let’s try it again.

One, two, three, four, five, SIX!

“Nurse!”

Somehow the attendants in the delivery room missed a little something.  But you’ll never slip an extra thumb past a mother.

Technically, it’s called thumb polydactylism, one of the most common birth defects affecting the hand.   A Wikipedia entry claims that one out of every 500 babies is born with some form of polydactylism, from a small stub of soft tissue to a fully formed thumb or finger.  It is believed to be genetic and carried down from generation to generation.

When my former embryonic self was a mere 15 days old, one of the tiny tissue buds that would become my fingers split.  Eventually that split turned into my extra thumb.

My family talks of a great uncle in Wales who had the same condition, except he kept his.  I imagine people were startled when he shook hands with them, and wrapped that extra thumb around their fingers.

Oh, imagine the things you could do with that extra digit!  You could become an accomplished pianist with a rollicking, boogie-woogie style that would put Jerry Lee Lewis to shame.  Or a professional baseball pitcher!  You could sling a three-seam fastball that rose, dipped and darted to the side -– nastier that Mariano Rivera’s splitter.

Alas, my parents kept me from the life of a great entertainer -– or a circus freak –- by asking the hospital’s pediatric surgeon to remove my bonus gift.  Much later, my mother told me how she had fretted over the decision.  She said it wasn’t fair to make such a difficult choice without knowing what I would have wanted.

I told her it was fine.  It is what it is.  And when you toss in my Crohn’s Disease, alcoholism and chronic depression, I’m enough of a genetic freak show as it is.

If people are curious, I’ll explain my prodigious digits.  I’ll show them my left and right thumbs side by side so they can see how the right one is nearly half the size of the left -- like a Mini-me brother.  The right one is also almost wrinkle-free, since I have quite limited motion with the upper joint.

Then I’ll spread my fingers as wide as they go and place my hands together, palms touching.  That way people can see that my right thumb splits the difference between where my normal left thumb and index finger are.

I also tell them it’s no big deal.  I’m right-handed and I pitched in organized youth baseball leagues through 9^th grade and even threw a two-hitter once.  (The first hit I gave up was a cheap single.  The second was a moon shot to right field that went as high and far as the Neptune probe – you could have eaten a hundred Memphis-style barbecued ribs and still had time to wet-nap your face and hands before that baby came back to earth.)

I also played guitar and juggled (not at the same time).  I admit I was no threat to Clapton, Stevie Ray or Cirque de Soleil, but I wasn’t awful either.

Twenty years after my appearance on this earth at that hospital in Camden, my two remaining thumbs and I got a job as a teaching assistant at an elementary school in Aurora, Colorado.  My main responsibility was to help the teacher, Mrs. Warren, ride herd on 30 or so 3^rd and 4^th Grade kids in an experimental teaching program.

For the most part, the school had open classrooms where the children had limited structure, even at an early age.  The kids who couldn’t cope with that and needed a more rigid structure were assigned to my class, which resembled a traditional school room.

One day all the kids but one were outside at lunch recess, running like dogs.  Cal -– who was one of the fit, athletic kids -– stayed behind.  He sat at his desk with his head down, resting on his arms.

I asked Mrs. Warren what was wrong with him.

“He’s upset about his thumbs,” she told me.

“His thumbs?” I asked.

She told me that Cal was born missing a thumb on his left hand and with an extra one on his right.  He’d had the extra thumb removed shortly after birth, just like me.  On some days, being different from the other kids makes him sad, Mrs. Warren said.  Today was one of those days.

I briefly told her my story and she asked if I would go share it with him.  Of course, I said.

So I walked over to Cal and asked if I could talk to him. He nodded softly.  So I told him about my hand, showed him the difference between my right and left thumbs.  I let him see the scars on my wrist where they removed part of the extra tendon and attached it to my baby thumb to try to give it more mobility in the top joint.  I let him trace the pale scars that snaked across the base of my thumb, the ones from the operation I’d had at 14 to take away the bump left from my initial surgery at five days old.

Then I told Cal that none of it mattered.  I said that I’d pitched in Little League, I play guitar.  I shared my family’s story about my great uncle in Wales who had kept his third thumb.

And we laughed.  We were two freaks of nature, different from the others and with an immediate and special bond because of it.  After we finished talking, Cal got up and ran outside.

Later that day, when the kids were engrossed in a project, Mrs. Warren called me over.  I anticipated her thanking me, telling me what an inspiration I was to Cal.  Thanks to our talk, she was going to say, I was his new idol and the boy was ready to think positively and move on with his life.

“I talked to Cal,” she said.  “You know what he said?”

“No,” I replied, eager to hear the praise that was coming my way.

“He said: ‘Mr. Price’s thumb is even uglier than mine!’”
 

“Oh,” I said, the hot flash of embarrassment reddening my cheeks.  Oh, my. 

I was certain she could hear my ego deflating, but she didn’t let on.  So I just smiled.

At the end of the school day, I watched Cal get up from his desk and gather his things.  He seemed like just another happy kid.

As he walked out the door, I remember thinking, "Good for you, Cal.  Good for you.  Three thumbs up, my little friend.  Three thumbs up."

 

Comments

[Eliza Chan]

I was feeling a bit gloomy today… until I read this story. Thanks, David and Cal. ;-)

[Carl]

Your gift and talent for writing continues. All the best.