The mystery of thumbs

My good friend told me, with great authority the other day, that men’s thumbs can be considered a valid (though minimised one hopes), reflection of a certain other aspect of the male physique. I pondered the correlation at some length, which led to a consuming, and I trust temporary, obsession with examining thumbs. The man who served me at Morrisons (otherwise known as Moribunds) had an alarmingly short thumb, the postman’s is slightly yellow, the man next to me on the train had a tapered one, and at Starbucks I saw one with a bulbous end. The neighbour’s is off kilter, the end slightly cracked and my mechanic’s greasy. However, imagine my alarm when a lovely young man asked me for dinner, and sliding my eyes slowly down to his hand, I discovered his thumb was missing.