The Case of the Peppered Thumb

A BOY'S HABIT of sucking his thumb no great tragedy--unless the boy happens to be you. But I didn't think of it as a tragedy. I just accepted it as part of me. The only problem was that this habit made me different from the others. I wanted to belong, and I was rejected by the group--not ostracized or anything drastic like that, just teased a lot. Close friends were a rarity with me in those earliest school years. My friendships were more likely to be with grown-ups, as different as they were from me, because at least they didn't make fun of me all the time. I must have felt a great need to identify, because once, when I spotted a forty-year-old redcap sucking his thumb, a wave of warmth and relief came over me, and I later announced that I wanted to be a redcap when I grew up.