Rule of Thumb

Yesterday I hit my thumb with a hammer. I haven’t done that since I was maybe seventeen. There is a blood blister under the nail but is not big enough to threaten it, thank the lucky stars. I’m wondering what the connection is between this ridiculously amateurish accident and other current events. Here is a thumbnail sketch of a recent head-scratcher that I have been dealing with while remodeling a bathroom in my building.



This is my first shower enclosure from scratch. Was I short-circuiting a “thumbs up” gesture regarding the hopeful success of the shower by trying to incapacitate the digit?

Here’s another theory. I often tease my cats by wiggling my thumbs at them, or rapidly touching the tip of my thumbs to each of my four fingers in quick succession, all the while intoning, “opposable thumbs baby, opposable thumbs! Bet you wish you had’em”. Could this callous treatment have yielded a kind of cosmic retribution?

Another thought: It’s a long shot, but I was recently cast in a world premier of a commissioned play titled “Greedy” by Karl Gadjusek, produced by a theatre company named Clubbed Thumb here in NYC. Hmmm. Am I trying to qualify as a worthy Clubbed Thumb member? Am I looking for a ritual or rite that will gain me entrance and acceptance and therefore I forgot decades of hand-eye coordination and landed my hammer on my thumb? Or was it just a stupid accident?