Thumbs Up

A student came in yesterday with a broken thumb. He worked very hard, but struggled through the day.

With his bulky cast, it is difficult for him to write. Nearly impossible really. A normally neat kid, could not produce the same results. His model hand writing turned into that of a first grader. In the time it normally takes him to write two pages, he got out two sentences. The difference is clear!

Watching him reminded me of sixth grade. One of the best teachers I have ever had got talking about broken bones. He spoke of how when in college, he broke his thumb. It turned his world upside down. Think about your thumbs. Really think about them! They are so important! We are so lucky to have thumbs. That teacher explained the importance of our thumbs. He challenged us to try to open our locker without using our thumbs. It seemed simple and easy. Being a student to The task seemed nearly impossible. Turning the dial with your pointer and middle fingers was tough. So, to put myself in my student's shoes today, I decided to go through my day without using my thumbs. Bad decision!

It is beneficial for children to have a teacher that can write legibly on the chalkboard. It is nice when a teacher can shuffle and pass out papers, a task that becomes nearly impossible without thumbs. I nkow, because I dropped a stack full of papers all over the floor. Maneuvering a computer mouse was extremely difficult. It drew mocking as we played through a review game on the computer. Holding a book is not easy. Turning the pages, ever harder. In fact, I can't think of one thing that was easy to do without thumbs.

On top of that, we play a lot of review games by passing a ball around. Wouldn't you know, the kids wanted to pass to me more than ever today! Catch a ball without thumbs. Try it. The first few times, it didn't work. The ball bounced off my hands, then it slipped through them and hit my stomach, then it slipped through and grazed my face. This threw my class into a frenzy. Eventually, I figured it out. Catching with two hands, closing that gap where the missing/unusable thumbs are. I felt very adaptable, like a cavewomen.

Try it. Don't want to do it for a whole day? Try it for fifteen minutes. You will hate it, but want to try it longer for some odd reason. Some suggestions on things to try: eating a bowl a cereal, unscrewing a bottle cap, changing the channel on a remote, turning a door knob, and holding a bar of soap. Let me know what you find hard.

I'm sure glad my hands don't look like this,

Life would be much harder. And, I'm pretty sure Jeff wouldn't be too fond of holding my hand! He hates it as it is, thumbs and all.