Photo by Scott Drummond

My thumbs are a sign-of-the-times. When there’s a lot going on in my life and I’m stressed, they look like mangled prunes, chewed-up and spit out. When things are going OK and I momentarily forget about my worries, they’re as smooth and soft as a baby’s butt. Either way, my thumbs are never finished — they’re the ultimate “work in progress” as I go through every day facing new challenges.

My thumbs are the physical embodiment of a mental predisposition to extremes. On one hand (pun intended), my life, and the events in it can be dull, boring and inert. On these days, I often find myself lying on the couch for hours at a time, mindlessly flipping through channels — enter the realm of the “smooth thumb.” Conversely, my life can be fast, frenetic and overworked. On these days, I find myself running from class to work to meetings to band practice without any break in between. Chewed thumb, here I come. With each change in routine comes a new set of behaviors that lend themselves to either compulsive anxiety or laziness.

When I’m in school, I’m generally in the realm of the chewed thumb. I pack my days chock-full of events, running the gamut from academic to recreational (if time permits at the end of the day) and leave little time to just chill out. I’ve followed this routine, to varying degrees and with minimal success, for the last two years. On a good day in the chewed thumb realm, minimal damage is done, something akin to having a bloody hangnail peel and then fall off, leaving a small patch of blood on an otherwise healthy-looking plot of skin. On a bad day, however, my thumbs look as though they have been fighting alongside each other, and losing, in a violent war where the enemy uses piercing daggers. Suffice to say, it’s not a pretty picture. On these days when my thumbs are at their worst, I find my behavior follows suit. The slightest bit of stimuli seems to put me over the edge and I stress out about insignificant things — like where I put a piece of paper with a memo to call someone.

I begin forgetting how to remember and that object I’ve just put down on a table vanishes from my memory almost instantly. On these days, it’s not uncommon for me to “lose” and then “find” my wallet, my phone, my shoes and other items that are constantly shifting places three, four or even five times (though five is, admittedly, a rare occurrence).

This teeter-tottering between extremes has been a lifelong trait. Thinking back, I can remember displaying nervous behavior on my first day of first grade: standing at the bus stop with a small army of butterflies in my stomach, terrified by whatever experience the bus ride to school might bring. My first day of riding the bus and first grade came and went without any major problems but my nervous edge did not. Though I soon learned the bus ride to school brought little in the way of scary experiences, I never completely got used to leaving the comfort of my home only to be picked up by a grizzled-looking stranger (the bus driver) and sitting with a bunch of kids, from different backgrounds and of different ages, who were hyper and generally very loud.

This nervous behavior continued to manifest itself throughout grade school. Before school every morning, I would have this daunting feeling that I was leaving something very important behind on the way out the door to the bus stop. For four elementary school years, before frantically running out the door just a minute or two away from missing the bus, I would give my mom a quick kiss on the cheek and then in a desperate, distressed tone blurt out, “Any messages, anything, ANYTHING?!” Mostly she just laughed but there was the occasional message that kept me asking this question almost obsessively every day. At night, the behavior continued. Spurred on by the idea that “things that go bump in the night” could be hiding in my walls, underneath my bed and in my closet, I routinely checked these spaces before I went to bed. Needless to say, I never found any monsters, but the thought that one lapse in my routine could result in an encounter with some big black hairy creature with huge fangs ready to have me as a midnight snack kept me always checking before going to bed.

Nowadays, I’ve traded in my elementary school fears of encounters with monsters for college-aged fears of the unknown. At this time in my life, I am constantly asking myself questions like how will I balance all of my school-related responsibilities without an ever-increasing work load? How will I perform in difficult classes? And the ever-present question every senior grapples with: What kind of job will I get after graduation? At the end of the day, my thumbs bear witness to my abilities to cope and are an indicator of what might lay ahead for the future.

cbrown@kansan.com