The Thumb

The Thumb

It was 1970 and the Vietnam war was in full swing, fueled by the lives of young men as it lumbered slowly toward nothing.

My Ex, XIII, was 18 years old.  He’d dropped out of school and had “Cannon Fodder” tattooed on his forehead.

On this day he was in the basement of his father’s house, preparing to weed the dandelions as per his mother’s request.  She probably thought this meant he would be out in the yard on his hands and knees pulling on recalcitrant flora.  She didn’t know him as well as she might have.

In fact, he was working on a more creative solution.  He was making a small dandelion bomb.

To this end he’d found a shell casing.  I don’t know how big it was, but I picture something on the order of an inch or less.  Into this he was carefully stuffing kitchen matches.  

Not carefully enough, as it turns out.  The last match must have been a tight fit, because

Boom!

The whole thing exploded in his hand.  

And suddenly, he had hamburger,  a stump where his left thumb had been.  

He was in the ambulance en route to the hospital when it hit him.  He was disabled.  Yea!!!!

Yup.  As it turns out, XIII lost the top half of that thumb, completely.  This meant that while he could still type, light a cigarette, and wash dishes, he couldn’t load a rifle.  He was 4-F.

Not so fast.  He was indeed disabled in the eyes of the U.S. Army, but they do things their own way at the draft board.  

When he went in for his physical, he showed them the thumb, or lack there of.  “Yes”, they said, “You are ineligible for service.  Or will be, when we receive a letter from your doctor, stating that you have no second joint on your left thumb.”

Luckily, XIII had anticipated this.  He had the letter in his pocket.  Whew!

So XIII did not go to Vietnam.  He did not develop the thousand-yard stare, did not awake screaming from the nightmares.  Did not wind up on the streets in a tattered green jacket.

Instead he stayed home and developed a really convincing trick to play on little kids.  “Look!  My thumb is gone!”… and it was.  Arrrgghhhh!!!!

He loves this trick.