Sometimes when I go to sleep at night, the four fingers of my left hand cover my left thumb.* Not like my hand is in a fist, though. More like the thumb is just under the covers. The finger covers. It’s kind of like a hermit crab (see what I did there?). Or a small, cute, naked Señor Wences. I don’t know when I do it. I don’t know I’m doing it. I’m half asleep if I even notice it.
As a little baby child I had such a severe case of buckteeth that when I entered a room, my incisors walked in first. By 7th grade, I had retainers, braces, more retainers, and the absolute greatest orthodontist named Morton Speck who had Archie comic books in the waiting area, but I didn’t do well with any of it. Among other situations, the trouble I got into every time I accidentally left my retainer at a restaurant was too traumatizing to handle. I’m no longer Bucktooth, but my teeth are as crooked, messy, and foolish as our former mayor, Eric Adams. Truly. It’s like if you had arthritic bunions and a bunch of hammertoes, but in your mouth. Bad teeth are a family curse — mostly on my mother’s side — but I made it worse as a child with my thumb-sucking habit. My denticles never fully recovered. Dr. Speck would roll over in his grave.
It could have been worse, I guess? I weaned myself off of sucking my thumb by the time I was in first or second grade. I imagine I accomplished this feat by tucking my thumb under whenever I felt the urge, or whenever I was urged by my mother to get my thumb out of my mouth. I didn’t even realize my thumb tucks itself under (in?) until maybe a decade ago. I’m like 100 years old — how I never noticed it before is anybody’s guess.
The point of the story is I was a child with a thumb-sucking habit who became an adult with a thumb-tucking habit. And that is weird, and probably also all my mother’s fault.
Let’s write, bitches.
*The thumb isn’t a finger and everybody knows it.
