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One of the things that made me feel more connected to the world when I was a child was...a drum roll, please: sucking my thumb.
It was so great that I didn't give it up until I was nine years old. And by that time, boy were my teeth messed up. But I didn't care. Sucking my thumb was a kind of communion. I thought I could contact aliens while sucking my thumb--that's how tuned into the universe I felt when I was doing it. (I don't, however, know why I wanted to contact aliens, but whatever.)
I even told my best friend Robin about it. And 25 years later, when she had a thumbsucking baby of her own, she made me a special birthday card with a picture of her daughter sucking her thumb. The message read "calling all aliens to wish you a happy birthday!!" Now that's a good friend--one who remembers what you said about contacting aliens by sucking your thumb for all those years.
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3 comments:
I sucked my thumb, too. Well into elementary school--I think I might have been 7 or so when I finally stopped. Did I ever have an overbite. No alien connection for me, though. :)
glad to hear it, heather! there don't seem to be many of us who thumbsucked past kindergarten or so.
I wish thumbsucking still gave me sense of being plugged into the universe that it once did; I would do it all the time, overbite be damned!
You may be interested in knowing that E is still sucking on that index finger (her "suck finger" or "sucky"), although she's trying so hard not to do it in public these days now that she's all grown-y. However, when she gets home from school, the first thing that she wants to do is curl up in my lap and suck on her finger, which isn't a huge surprise since this is the kid who was still occasionally nursing when she started preschool. It's comforting and a nice way of unwinding for both of us. (Just don't tell my mother or mother-in-law!)
And her teeth are perfect according to her dentist.
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