A Saga: Thumbs Up

At the ripe old age of 4 years old, before I understood where true peace came from (as mentioned in my previous saga post), I found peace in nothing less then my right thumb. That’s right, I was a thumb sucker…. even in the womb! The thumb and the blankey went with me EVERYWHERE: in the car, in the store, in the restaurant, to friend’s houses, while watching tv, while eating, while sleeping…well, I think you get the picture. Yep, that thumb was permanently glued to my mouth and that blankey was permanently glued to my nose and nothing no one would say or do could convince me to rid myself of such a wonderful habit…. Or so I thought.

I was a rather gullible child. Actually, I’m still rather gullible, but have become a lot wiser due to life experiences, but those are stories for another time. Anyways, as a young child, I would always take weekend trips with grandma and papa to West Virginia to visit good ‘ol Great Aunt Rita. She was a sweet, clever, sharp, independent little old lady who had dentures and would eat grapes without her teeth for breakfast. I never did understand how she managed that. Unbeknownst to me, my parents had mentioned my thumb sucking habit to Aunt Rita. They were all worried about an overbite, germs, and not to mention I was a little old to still be sucking my thumb! So leave it to Aunt Rita—she was bound and determined to get me to stop! How did she go about managing this task? Well, she walked right over to me and had me put my hands together. She would say, “Now Amanda, look at your thumbs. Do you see how much shorter your right thumb is then your left thumb?” My eyes grew wide as I saw this seemingly huge difference in my thumb sizes and nodded my head in agreement. She then told me, “Well, that’s because your thumb is about to fall off. If you keep sucking your thumb, it’s going to shrivel up and fall right off!”

Okay, this woman was brilliant!

My gullible mind was convinced so that night I slept with my hand behind my back. I was NOT going to be a thumbless child! The next morning, I woke up happy with my great success of not sucking my thumb for one whole night! Of course I looked at my hands to compare thumbs and wouldn't you know... my right thumb was “growing”!

We all rejoiced in my success at not sucking my thumb. In fact, I had daddy take me to the Goodwill so I could give my blankey to someone who needed it more than me. However, the rejoicing didn’t last long. Shortly after, at the age of 5, I hit a rather large bump in the road that caused me to resort back to my comforting thumb.

This bump changed my whole life.