Waving Goodbye To The Five

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-by Alan Allen

This Just In...

There was a baby born several months ago in a distant land located in some remote, pointy corner of the globe. I can’t remember the name of the country, but I do recall its shape resembling that of a half eaten croissant. At first glance this child appeared to be a normal, healthy, baby girl, born to healthy, normal looking parents. By normal I mean that there were no antennae, and each parent had a face. But three weeks after bringing the offspring home from the hospital, mom and dad noticed something a bit off.  The baby had 6 fingers and toes on each hand and foot respectively.

 In scientific terms this is known as “polydactylism” from the Ancient Greek. “Polus” meaning "many”,”daktulos” meaning "finger" and “ism” referring to anything that is deemed as being something as opposed to being nothing.

When I first heard this story I thought, ”That’s just gross”, but my repulsion soon turned to sympathy when I realized the severity of the awkward phase that child was going to go through. Several minutes after that, the fundamental problem with this issue hit me. How could the hospital staff miss something like this? We’ve all heard horror stories about doctors amputating the wrong leg or removing a lung instead of a tooth. These things happen all the time. But this?

Then I remembered the time I saw my first newborn. When the vomiting stopped, and I got past the horror of seeing a head that looked as though it had just been removed from a pot of boiling water, I noticed how tiny its hands were. Really tiny. Like grains of rice stuck into a ball of Silly Putty. Chances are someone like myself would have easily overlooked the six-digit anomaly, (I was outside once and actually missed a solar eclipse), but these folks are trained professionals. And although the nurses are probably on the lookout for third nipples and making sure there’s a head, count the fingers man.

 Polydactylism is not as rare as one might think. It actually occurs in 1 in 500 children.  It is a dormant gene on the father’s side, and the resulting abnormalities are usually just “lopped” off once the child has had its first birthday. This makes circumcision seem like a haircut.

In most cases, these extra appendages are misaligned, non-functional, and tend to be more of an annoyance than an asset once the child starts taking piano lessons; however, this particular case is rare in that this child’s’ extra digits were fully operational, each one working independently of the others. They were arranged in an unobtrusive, normal fan-like progression on the hands and feet and were not even noticed until the girl was almost three weeks old.

Down The Road

They say that over the course of the next million years or so, there exists the remote possibility that six fingers and toes will become genetically dominant. No doubt this will create a problem for the glove industry, but more importantly it gives rise to a more serious dilemma…what to name the extra finger and toe.

As for naming the extra toe, I’m not seeing an issue here. “Toe naming” has never really been one of our top priorities. “Big Toe”, “Little Toe”, “That toe next to the other one that takes a sharp left”. Not very creative. Even the nursery rhyme just calls them “Little Piggies”. I don’t see a problem with having six Piggies as opposed to five.

But our fingers are a different story. They have become intertwined with our everyday existence. Next to shedding gills, I think it’s safe to say that the advanced use of our digits is one of mankind’s more important evolutionary breakthroughs. Of course some would argue that language is what separates us from the herd, but language is more of a cultural, anthropological advancement, which progressed at varying rates according to the needs of individual societies. Give me a fist over speech any day. I’d rather be able to punch a man in the throat than have to form a sentence in order to communicate with him. Hands down (ha!), our fingers have become our primary source of non-verbal communication.

So what do we call the new addition? Since we’ve already classified each of our existing fingers, I’m assuming that we’ll probably use this as a basis for naming the new one.

The Contenders

Let’s start with the thumb. Sure other species have them, but ours have evolved in ways that allow us to use them for other activities other than just “holding on”. A thumb can express positivityness as in, “I thought that movie was quite enjoyable”, or negativityness as in, “What a piece of garbage”. If you’re lucky, it can get you a ride when you’ve run out of gas. It can pull out a plum and light a cigar. We can suck it; twiddle it, flip a coin and can take a man’s eye out with it. It can wrestle other thumbs and we can put an entire person under it. Just ask my ex. Even though I think an extra thumb would look freakishly interesting, our thumb shouldn’t have to share the spotlight with a second thumb. There can only be one Thumbkin.

Let’s move on to the “Index” finger or “Pointer” if you’re under six. Next to the thumb, this is the finger with the most versatility. It gave birth to the index card and a family of sisters. It lets a sports fan show the world that his team is #1. It also lets me point at that same guy and say, “You’re an idiot”. When it collaborates with my thumb, I’m letting you know that everything is OK, but when I use it to make a circular motion next to my ear, I’m letting you know you’re nuts. Perhaps a second index finger could be assigned the sole task of picking your nose. “Picker Finger” might work. But that would exclude all the people who don’t engage in this activity.  The new limb can’t possibly be assigned a function that is practiced by only a percentage of the population. So that’s out. “Pointer #2” or “Second Index finger”? Too wordy. Onward. 

 Next in line we have the Middle Finger. This is a problem. With the introduction of a sixth finger, the term “Middle Finger” will immediately become obsolete. There is no “middle” in the world of even numbers. The Brady’s never had a middle child, a football game can’t have a middle quarter, and none of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse could ever say, “I wanna ride in the middle.” Our middle finger will lose all that it has worked so hard to achieve, and with it shall mark the passage of one of the great fingers in history. It is “The” finger. “The Flip Off”, “The Bird”, “The Toss”. It is so special that all other fingers bow down before it when it is called into service. Never before has a finger given so much and asked for so little in return, and one day perhaps, evolution will callously return the favor by forcing us to strip it of its identity. Mathematical constraints will kill the Middle Finger. Rest in peace my special f*cking friend.

Let’s skip ahead to the Pinky. A second pinky would be like a second little toe. You’d be stubbing that thing every day. It would stick out like…well a sore thumb, getting caught on and in everything. You’d type faster, but would you be more efficient? I dont   thinnk so.. This leaves us with the final finger….the “Ring Finger”.

The ring finger can bite me. It is a haughty, presumptuous, pretentious, self absorbed, arrogant little digit whose sole purpose is to sport some overpriced scrap of metal that says, “We found someone who understands us, who gets us, someone who gives us nicknames, and “to do” lists. Let me tell you something. If the middle finger could give “The Finger” to the ring finger, I’m pretty sure it would do so on a regular basis. I have no love for this finger, as it is mostly a supporting cast member. If we are forced to accept a sixth finger, I vote that we should name it “Second Ring Finger”. Knock that high handed, egotistic, pompous little appendage down a bit. Of course we could go with ”Bling Finger”, but then we’d feel obligated to burden it with that garbage. Gold is not my color, so maybe we could ultimately go with something a bit more modest. Something understated yet grand. We could give our new family member a unique identity all its own, bestowing on it a special place amongst its elders. Something like… oh I don’t know….how about “Alan”? I like it. “Alan”. Say it slowly with me, letting it roll off your tongue and waft gently out on hot, unbridled breath, floating effortlessly away as it mixes and mingles in an orgiastic embrace with the cool evening breezes, finally alighting on the ears of a world that is yearning for closure and conciliation. A world which has not seen a hint of human transformation in many an epoch. A world that thirsts for change while desperately clinging to familiarity. A world that is longing for an end to the madness, an answer to the insanity and an acceptance of inevitable evolution. “Alan”…oh yes.

Now that has a nice ring to it.