Tin.Can.Goat

My thumbs are a conversation starter.

Even now I’ve started one and you are reading it.

I never really considered writing about my awkward thumbs before, but a recent experience during my karate class two weeks ago forced me to realize that writing about it was necessary. I figured it best to educate people before they meet me. At least, this way, we should be able to forgo the typical “Oh my God!”’s, the “WTF?”’s, and the “Dude, seriously. You sure those aren’t toes?”’s.

“This guy is kicking my butt,” I said. I touched my enflamed pectoral, and winced. “I’m getting way too old for this crap.”

“Suck it up old man.”

I looked at John. At 58, and 20-years my senior, he was in awesome shape. His remark bit, and I muttered a retort under my breath.

He winked, and with a jump, pulled out twenty full chin-ups.

I stared. A twinge crossed my eyes. One of jealousy, yet mixed with admiration. Oh, if only he’d drop and break his hip, I thought. But he landed with a delicate thup and, bent over at the waist, shook the sweat from his hair.

“You wouldn’t be so fat and out-of-shape if you did this every day,” he said. “Once a week is pathetic.”

“This is my second.” I said.

He looked at me and kissed a bicep. “Cannons. Next time I’ll get fatty over there to hug my legs while I do it.”

I glanced at the overweight teenager sitting cross-legged against the far wall.

“Yeah, him,” the old man said. “The one that looks like a thinner, younger version of you.” He cockatieled in the mirror. “Getting too strong. I could use a challenge.”

“I am not that fat.” I poked my thumb into my abdomen. “Just a little pudgy in the middle.”

“Good Lord, look at those meat hooks.” He grabbed my wrist and turned it over in his hands. “With these meaty palms and the thick covering of fur, you look the offspring of an orangutan.”

“No, now look—“

“How did you escape?”

“Escape?—What?”

“From Dr. Moreau.

“I’ll bet he’s super pissed he lost the likes of you. Probably the closest looking thing to a human he’s engineered. An anthropologic marvel.”

“Whatever,” I said, and followed him back onto the mats.

Our instructor paced as we lined up, his thumbs locked in this belt. “On your bellies,” he said. “Time for some pyramids.”

I sat up, and raised my hand. “Is that like diamonds?”

He put his hands up in front of his eyes. “Triiii-aaaaangle. See how my thumbs and forefingers make a triiii-aaaaangle?”

I nodded.

“Then it’s a triangle. If I moved my thumbs down like this—”

I interjected, “Then it’s a diamond. But my thum—”

“Triiii-aaaaangle.”

Someone behind me sighed.

“Sir. I know what you’re saying, but what does—“

“What does it matter?”

I nodded.

“It matters, because the diamond works different muscles in your chubby arms than the triangle.”

He knelt down in front of me. “Now look. Put your hands down on the mat like this.

“See how mine is the shape of a triiii-aaaaangle?”

“Yes sir.”

“Ok, do that.”

I placed my triangle on the mat, and he rocked back as if I were diseased.

“What the hell is that? Looks like an experimental aircraft.”

“Language!” The school-owner’s wife called out from the back office.

His eyes rolled up and he scratched his head. “Language? What the he—?” He dropped his hand, and several parents shook their heads. “Oh yeah.”

“Sorry ma’am,” he called out to her. “Slip of the tongue.”

He dropped next to me. “Sorry about that. So here, put your weird Hobbit hands down again.”

I did. But my thumbs fought me and forced themselves in to a diamond, or inverted into a Star Trek insignia.

“Not so far out,” he said. “You’re not that badass—”

“Language!”

He rolled his eyes, and continued. “Bring that triangle-vagin—” He paused, his eyes wide and lips pulled back as he listened.

Nothing.

He continued. “Nah, not like that. You want it back here, more under your chest, like so. Yes, like that. Good. Good, Nancy.

“Ok, from now on, make sure both the diamond and the triangle are right there. Your breastbone should be bumping that di-mangle every time you go down.

“Think of it this way. When I was in the Corps, my D. I. said, ‘Picture you got your lady down there. She’s all spread-eagle on the floor under you. Waiting on you to get hard and show your peck—‘“

A scream, shrill and piercing, bansheed from the back. His eyes widened and he fell back onto his rear. “Guy!”

“Right,” he yelled back, and looked around at the curious pre-teens in the room and their shocked parents who lined the walls. He nodded to the parents. “Sorry ladies, I was getting a little carried away.”

“Guy!”

He glanced at the hallway to the office and stood. He brushed dust, hair, and a finger nail from his pants, and said, “I need to go for a few. Let’s, um…let’s do some…um…Jumping Jacks. That sounds—well, it just sounds right. And about now it just sounds pretty safe.”

He pointed at me. “Lead the count for me.”

I nodded and watched him stutter-step to the back, and close the door behind him.

We stared in silence as the door rattled from the muffled voices. I looked at the students in front of me, and shrugged. “Ready?” I said.

The kids snapped to attention with a well-chorused, “Sir!”

We exercised, and I shook my head as I watched two women at the back of the class laugh and giggle as they scratched their armpits, and mockingly charaded the peeling of a banana.

[958]