Muscular Thumbs

                           Muscular Thumbs

    It was a bright, sunny morning in Amherst, N.Y. We found ourselves in the Fitness 19 gym, on North Forest Rd. At our advancing age, we needed to actively fight the effects of our coming aging, in any manner that we could manage. Usually, I could go at the weights and stationary bikes, full tilt for an hour, until some secret mechanism in the body signaled “Abbastanza!” (enough already.) Afterwards, we were rewarded with an hour or so of pleasant morning relaxation, sitting in our “social office” outside of Wegman’s on Sheridan Dr.

    Today, I had noticed a strange phenomenon in the gym. Some of the younger  exercisers were carrying cell phone in their hands, as they attempted to burn off a few calories. They did this while impatient other patrons tapped their feet nearby, waiting for them to quit hogging the weight machine and move on.“WTF?” I wondered. How the heck can you manage most of the weights, while grasping a cell phone in a death grip. Oh sure, perhaps on the abductor and adductor machines and stationary bikes, you could manage it. But the question is “Why would you?” I guess I could understand an emergency room physician or police official, on 24-hour call, having to be connected. But would even they have the phone in their hands while exercising? Maybe the fidgeters were exercising their thumbs to develop a lifetime of suppleness and strength in that joint. They would need that ability if they carried on these activities for a lifetime. Muscular thumbs! That is a new concept. Perhaps the glove industry will have to reconfigure their hand patterns to accommodate larger, more muscular digit spaces in their patterns.

    Perhaps, some of these thumbolinas were expecting important communiques from the white House. Others may have been following intently the stock exchange and information related to their billion-dollar portfolios. Their brokers would need to contact them for instantaneous instructions on billion-dollar trades. Or, perhaps they were just being plain silly, succumbing to the new age malady of information addiction.

      We are all familiar with the “headdowners” amongst us. You see them daily everywhere, their head bent in concentration reviewing important e-mails and ads for underwear on their i-phones. Some walk blindly into traffic, unaware of their precarious position, while busy browsing. I am told that on college campuses the phenomenon is so pervasive that whole herds of the connected wander across campus, like herds of sheep, bumping into each other and everything else while they monitor the fate of the world on their i-phones. Or, maybe they are just being silly too?

      Once upon a time, presidents, captains of industry and titans of the business world carried pagers that would alert them of the need to check in when a crisis of import required their attention. And one can even understand people playing with cell phones while waiting for life to pass them by. That is marginally better than listening to the jingling coins in the pockets, like the nervous and fidgety people of old.

      To each his/her own is the street aphorism that suggest we let every person select their manner and mode of living. It is a wise philosophy. Even in the gym you can act oddly if you have a mind to. I only ask that out of courtesy, you move your butt when playing with your cell phone. Some of the rest of us, who don’t get e-mails from the white house and don’t have a billion-dollar stock portfolio to manage, are waiting to use that particular weight machine that you are monopolizing while you read your phone.And lastly, I hope you develop the set of muscular thumbs that you are aiming for. They will help you cope with all of the exciting news that you are reading about as life passes you by. Just saying.

                                             -30-

                                            (650 words)

                                    Joseph Xavier Martin