My Mysterious Thumbs -- Or Why I'll Never Find the Perfect Bowling Ball

These aren't my thumbs. Just some random thumb model, I guess.

Feeling a little goofy today, so I'm feeling the need to share a bit of my weirdness.

I think that the first time that I really recognized that I had weird thumbs was when I was in junior high. That's when all of the girls around me started getting fancy nails all the time. Whether it was through professional manicures or department store pasties, they showed up at school with awesome nails. I wanted awesome nails too. So I headed to the local Wal-mart and bought my first set of fake nails. They cost cheap, and they looked cheap, but in my young eyes they were GORGEOUS. I couldn't wait to smack those babies on my stubby fingers to see how glamorous I could look. All went well ... until I got to my thumbs. My thumbnails were HUGE. They were super wide and there was no nail pasty at all that was going to fit them. I was devastated ... you know, that kind of devastated a junior high girl can get when her life is absolutely RUINED because of the most ridiculous calamity. I was just devastated. How could life continue in happiness for me if I had such wide nails?

That wasn't the end to life altering events when it came to my wide thumbs. The next thing I began to notice as I got older and full grown was that regular fingernail clippers just didn't make the cut when it came to trimming my thumbnails -- not wide enough. I have to admit that there are completely ridiculous things in my life that give me grief at times, and this was one of those things. For some crazy reason it totally bothered me to be cutting my thumbnail with a toenail clipper. I know. I can be a bit neurotic sometimes. This makes absolutely no sense to me. They are the same contraption, only one is bigger than the other. I have managed to live a happy, delightful life, despite being forced to use the toenail clippers regularly. It's just that I am regularly reminded how freakishly wide my thumbnails are.

But that's not all. The real kicker with my thumbs occurred when I first went bowling. I don't know how I grew up in the Midwest and didn't end up going bowling until I was in college, but somehow I never had the opportunity until I was older. How could I have not really bowled while I was in high school? It's not like there was a ton of stuff to do in little Carrollton, MO. Bowling should have been one of the highlights. But I never did. So when I finally headed out to bowl as a young adult I dutifully headed to the ball racks to pick out the perfect ball for me -- not too heavy, not too light, with magical spinning ability that would make me an instant bowling phenom. But as I searched the racks I began to notice that the only balls that had thumb holes big enough to accommodate my monster thumbs weighed almost fifteen pounds and must have been created for neanderthal men with twelve inch hand spans. There was no way I was going to be able to be a super awesome bowler with a ball like that. I adapted. I had to. At least I could always blame my super sized thumbs for my lower scores, right?

I had always thought I was just a sweet freak of nature when it came to my thumbs, but actually it was during a bowling date with some friends of ours that I discovered that I wasn't so terribly unusual. We were living here in the Ft. Wood area and decided to go bowling with some friends of ours. He was a doctor on post, and as we were planning our big outing I mentioned that bowling had always been hard for me because of my freak thumbs. He looked at them and told me that his wife had the same problem, but only one of her thumbs was wide. She solved her bowling ball dilemmas by having a ball custom made. Brilliant. Why hadn't I thought of that? Well, actually we bowl so little that it would not make much economic sense to get a custom made ball, but if I ever decided to go pro I was totally going to do this. He told me that there was actually a name for this condition -- Brachydactyly Type D or BDD thumbs.

I was not alone!!!! There are lots of common names for this condition -- pygmy thumbs, murderer's thumb (no kidding -- I'll explain that later), stub thumb, club thumb ... and on and on and on. I actually call my thumbs spoon thumbs because they look like spoons to me with a wide tip and narrow bottom.  There are actually a lot of sites that are dedicated to discussing Megan Fox's toe thumbs. There are tons of explanations out there for why thumbs end up this way. I was getting a manicure once and the lady doing my nails explained that my thumbs got this way because I sucked my thumb in the womb. Really? I found that highly unlikely that I sucked both of my thumbs enough in utero to create my stubbies -- especially since I ended up sucking my middle two fingers on my left hand with regularity once I got out. And the murderer's thumb? Well, it turns out that somebody out there believes that those with toe thumbs are more likely to end up on some murderous rampage someday. Creepy. 

Women are more likely to have this condition than men, and there are actually lots of "support" groups out there for us toe thumbers. There is actually a website, http://www.toethumb.com/, dedicated to us. And there is a facebook group. It seems like most of the people on that group dedicate their time to trying to figure out the best way to get acrylic nails for our wide thumbs. I've never been much of an acrylic fan for my own nails, so this hasn't been a problem for me. And really, let's be honest, this really isn't a problem. I mean, I sure thought it was a problem when I was younger. But as I've gotten older and supposedly wiser I've come to love my little stubby thumbs. They're unique. And weird. And I kind of like being a touch weird. 

Now I'm proud to be the mom of my very own toe thumb girl. Laney's got my stubbies too. But her thumbs are super duper cute -- more like Megan Fox's thumbs. At least I now have someone who I can commiserate with when it comes time to choose our bowling balls. Toe thumbs of the world unite!