Monday, June 20, 2005

ah, the glory of the opposable thumb

Today my statistics teacher spent about 10 minutes in a discussion about today's generation's dexterity of thumbs. I lie not. It started with him asking us which do we use more, the index finger or the thumb?

His father, who is a construction worker, noticed this boy keying in the garage code with his thumb, and thought it quite strange. Strange, because the father himself would have keyed in the code with his index finger.

He then came upon the realization that today's generation use their thumbs more than his own. This attributed mostly to video games, where thumbs are, of course, most handy. Most people also use their thumbs to punch in numbers on their cell phones. (I have seen those in older generations use their fingers to type on their cell phone, and yes, it looks quite silly.) Then the teacher asked, which do you use when operating your calculator?

I laughed to myself. I use my fingers of course! What madness is this?? But some fear embedded in the back of my mind knew there must be some validity to this question. I held my calculator in my hand, slid it into its cover, and preceded to turn it on.

WITH MY THUMB!!!!

Surely this was not right, he must've tricked me into using the opposable phalange! But as I continued to feverishly type in random numbers, It was all thumb, thumb, thumb!!

I was distraught
I was dissapointed in myself
I cried.

Then I realized that yes, I can proudly say I use my thumbs on a daily basis, and so what? Besides, taking an observational stance, I conclude that thumbs are primarily used when the fingers are occupied. The new trend is, the fingers hold, the thumbs get ta workin'.

It all makes sense!
(after that, I preceded to fall asleep during the lecture on Table B, Random Digits)

3 comments:

Lyric27 said...

I think i wanna try my comments out.

Lyric27 said...

yay! they work

Ola said...

lol yea! for comments!