Do you retrieve how sensitive you felt about being "different" in some manner when you were kid?

Maybe you were shorter than your classmates. Or taller. Or had darker hair, or lighter hair. Or maybe you wore glasses.

Well…my difference was thumbs. That's right, thumbs.

I cognize it sounds silly, but for a long time I envied the other misses who had bantam thumbs. And yet, it wasn't until we were completing a class undertaking 1 twenty-four hours in simple school that I realized just how "different" mine were.

The instructor had divided us into three groups, and each grouping was supposed to decorate a bulletin board with a winter scene.

My grouping had decided to do snowmen, and since every snowman necessitates eyes, olfactory organ and a mouth, we elected to utilize pollex tacks.

I had just pushed in the first tack when a miss from my grouping spoke up.

"What happened to your thumb?" she asked.

Thinking maybe I had cut myself on a piece of paper, I examined my pollex carefully.

It looked good to me.

"Nothing," I said. "Why?"

She held up her thumb.

"Put yours beside mine," she instructed.

So I did.

My pollex was about one-half the length of hers and twice as wide.

"Look at this," she called to the others in the group.

They compared our pollexes for a few secs — and then the inquiries started.

"Did they acquire smashed in a auto door?"

"Did they acquire hit with a hammer?"

"Did person flatten them with a peal pin?"

As far as I knew, nil like that had ever happened.

"No," I said. "They've always been this way."

The other children glanced back and forth amongst themselves.

"Maybe you should inquire your mom," one of them suggested.

So I did.

"What make you mean, what happened to your thumbs?" my female parent inquired after I had gotten off the school autobus that afternoon. "Nothing happened to them."

Which was what I had been afraid she would say. Somehow, Iodine was hoping she would have got a long, drawn-out story about a monster accident that I couldn't remember.

"Are you SURE I didn't acquire them stuck in the auto door when I was really little?" I asked.

Mom shook her head. "No…no…nothing like that ever happened." Then her eyes narrowed. "Is that what the other children have got been saying?"

I nodded.

"Oh, for heaven's sake," she muttered.

Mom paused, forehead furrowed. "Okay," she said. "What make you utilize your pollexes for?"

I considered the question.

"Holding my pencil."

"And what else? How about setting the table? And…tying your shoes?"

I thought for a moment. "And combing my hair."

"Picking up a glass," Ma said.

"Holding a book," I said.

"Opening a door," she said.

"Drinking from a cup," I said.

"Buttoning a shirt," she said.

"Pushing in pollex tacks," I said.

"Zipping a zipper…"

We went on like this for respective proceedings until we both ran out of ideas.

"So what's the problem?" Ma asked finally. "Don't YOUR pollexes work just as well as everybody else's?"

Now that she mentioned it, they did work just as well.

"And haven't you ever noticed Dad's thumbs?"

I shook my head.

"Well, you should. Yours are just like his."

And she was right. True, Dad's hands were much larger than mine, but his pollexes looked just exactly like mine.

After that Iodine stopped envying all the misses who had petite, narrow, pretty thumbs, and when anybody asked what had happened to mine I'd say, "Nothing. They're just like my dad's."

My male parent was a farmer, and he used his pollexes to make many things — portion a calf be born, edifice hay wagons, overhauling the tractor, baling hay, planting crops, fixing fences. He also used his pollexes while planting the garden, making water ice pick from scratch, edifice a swing for me from rope from the hay mow, picking up newborn kitties so I could see them, instruction me how to drive the tractor, going fishing with me, showing me how to set a saddle on my pony. .

As far as I was concerned, there wasn't a thing in the world Dad couldn't make or fix, so if those sorts of pollexes were good adequate for him — they were good adequate for me, too.

And you cognize what? They still are.

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