That Girl with the Sixth Finger

Polydactyly(pɒlɪˈdaktɪli/):

noun 

a condition in which a person or animal has more than five fingers or toes on one, or on each, hand or foot.

In my case, a sixth finger on my left hand.

Now I wrote an essay about this almost three years back, but due to reasons such as ‘I was a noob back then’, and ‘old works are embarrassing’, I took it down and now have decided to rewrite it. 

So let’s rewind back to the spring of ’97, in the hospital room, where two baby girls are born to a somewhat happy couple who after more than five years of trying, finally got their reward.

I’m the one on the right, crying the roof down, while my twin is sleeping peacefully beside me. My mother is also busy sleeping peacefully after the tiresome C-section she had a few hours back; she doesn’t even want to see us yet. After all, sleep does come first.

My father is the first one to notice something odd about me. More specifically, on my left hand. 

Although I don’t know what exactly happened, but I’m pretty sure it went along the lines of my dad staring at my hand going, “One, two, three, four, five,..six…That’s not right. One, two, three, four, five...six. Huh.”

And thus began the life of this polydactyl homosapien.

Growing up was more than a little odd. 

Before starting school, I never gave even a second thought about that little ‘lucky’ finger next to my thumb; I always assumed everyone could count to eleven instead of ten, and that my twin sister was the odd one out. 

And my parents.

And my grandparents. 

And all my other relatives.

Even the maid.

So I wasn’t the brightest of kids back then.

Anyways, it was only after I started preschool, and experienced the bullying that came along with it, did I realize that I was not normal.

I was made fun of, taunted, teased constantly for my ‘anomaly’, and no matter what the teachers told me about how ‘lucky’ I should feel to be ‘blessed’ with this growth on my hand, I hated life.

I remember crying home after school every single day up till third grade, nagging my mom asking her why she didn’t have it surgically removed when I was a baby, when I wasn’t aware of how sharp blades and knives were.

And she’d always say the same thing. “Most of the, um, ‘extra fingers’ are usually no more than a lump of flesh and skin simply attached to the hand. In your case, it was an actual finger, with bones and veins. The doctors didn’t want us to remove it, said it was far too special to have it taken off.” 

 And like always, I’d zone out when she told me this. I felt far from special.

Maybe alien-special.

Because, there’s a lot of things I couldn’t and can’t do because of this.

So remember how in kindergarten, they’d make you draw the outline of your hand, and let you paint it or whatever?

See, I’m a rightie, so if I have to draw my hand, it would have to be my left. 

But I couldn’t.

Why? Because the page of the drawing book was never large enough to fit my baby hand, finger projection and all.

I remember crying in my room trying to tie up the finger to my thumb to make it look like one large finger just so it would fit on that stupid page.

But I couldn’t.

So I had to draw my right hand holding the pen with my left.

And that’s another thing I can’t do.

I’m not ambidextrous. I can’t hold a pen in my left hand because ‘Lucky’ (I’ve decided to call it that) keeps bumping into it, and it hurts like crazy.

So for a five year old to go through that much pain just so she doesn’t get yelled at by the teacher can just make you realize how horrible my childhood was. 

While all the drawing books had neat hands facing a particular direction, mine was ugly, totally facing the opposite way and so very clumsy.

I got yelled by the teacher anyway.

Next, I can’t wear gloves.

Or well, only on one hand. I can never wear oven mitts, or surgical gloves(partly why I didn’t pursue medicine, probably. The other part being my gross hatred towards disgusting wounds).

I can’t make that heart-shape thing you do with both your hands because it looks incredibly odd to have Lucky peeking from behind your thumb.

When I was a kid, it used to be unbelievably hard to tie my hair using a scrunchie because, well, Lucky used to get caught in it all the time. 

Believe it or not, my sister used to help me tie my hair up till about fifth grade, after which she started getting pissed when I kept nagging her and taught me how to do it properly. I used to wear my hair super short so I didn’t have to tie it up most of the times.

I can’t do most of the tricks with a rubber band, which is unfortunate because I was really interested in learning them.

Magic tricks are another thing I suck at because it’s hard to close your hand and be stealthy when you have Lucky with you.

I could probably go on and on about all the horrible things that come with polydactyly but I’d rather stop right there. 

There are, however a few things that work for me because of Lucky.

I can count till eleven (although,I don’t really use my fingers to count these days so that’s probably not helpful).

If you piss me off, I can inflict great pain upon you with a small handshake. Lucky is powerful.

I can easily win at thumb wars. 

Massages are awesome. It’s always great to have an extra finger when you have that persistent headache.

That’s probably it.

Oh well.

Over the years, people grew up; nobody teased me or taunted me about Lucky.

Oh no, they found new ways to make me feel uncomfortable.

They were getting fascinated. 

They wanted to touch it, pet it, play with it, and talk to it even.

I couldn’t paint my nails in peace without at least two people going “AWWW YOU PAINTED LUCKY TOO!”

What else was I supposed to do? Leave it out of the nail-painting fun?

But I’ve gotten used to the attention. Now, if someone happened to notice Lucky and gets all hyper about it, I don’t shy away like I normally did. Instead I extend my hand to them while mentally screaming, “YES I HAVE LUCKY. STAND AMAZED, HUMAN.”

Or well, something along those lines.

And now, here I am, nineteen years old and not giving a care about all the hushed whispers behind my back after seeing Lucky for the first time, all the poking and prodding and all the name-calling.

That Six-Fingered Girl.

The Girl with the Lucky Thumb.

Six-Fingers.

Mutant.

That last one is always a ‘favorite’ of mine. It was given to me by this kid back in tenth grade during biology when we were learning about mutations. 

It used to bother me before. But then I looked it all up, and it doesn’t bother me anymore. 

Polydactyly is the result of certain genetic mutations with some change in some chromosome and other scientific-y stuff that I don’t want to bore you with.

I used to think as a kid that I was being punished for something and that’s why I had Lucky. When everyone used to tell me just how lucky I was to be born this way, I used to whine and complain about the unfair-ness of it all.

But its only after I grew up, did I realize that maybe it's not all that bad to be different than the rest. 

 Now, I really do count myself as ‘lucky’.

You know why?

Because I know for a fact that you will never, ever, ever, forget about ‘That Girl with the Lucky Thumb’

Because, really, how often do you get to meet one of us polydactyl humans?