Thumb Wrestling Federation

Check out this original take on Thumb Wrestling, brought to you by Bernie DeKoven and featuring the Thumb Helmet:

Self-evidently, one takes a bit of foil, or candy wrapper, and twists it around the top part of the thumb so as to make a helmet similar to the classic Pickelhaube helmet worn by the German infantry in World War One. Notice the extreme spike-height in the illustration on the (right.) This is the kind of Thumb Helmet worn by a high-ranked Thumb Warrior, for, indeed, the higher the spike, the greater the skill required to win.

As in the normal course of Thumb Wrestling, two opponents begin the game by locking four fingers in the traditional grasp of the Thumb Wrestler.

Unlike the heretofore normal game of Thumb Wrestling, helmeted Thumb Wrestlers become Thumb Warriors securing victory, not by anything so crass as trapping the opponent’s thumb so as to pin it into the thumb-down of defeat. Rather, the Helmeted Thumb Warrior need only to cause the other player to “lose helmet.”

This is accomplished by a variety of sophisticated, cunning strategies, too sophisticated and cunning to enumerate here. Suffice it to say that under helmet jabs, pokes, jousting-like maneuvers, and, of course, spindle-pinning are but a few of the minor infinity of cunning thumbings available to the skilled Thumb Warrior. Actual thumb-to-thumb contact is considered gross, crass, and not nice.

I wonder when thumb wrestling started, and how it got passed down from generation to generation. Just the other day in church, while the congregation recited the Lord’s Prayer, I noticed the two altar boys — who were obviously brothers — holding hands. Except they weren’t really holding hands. They were thumb wrestling. It was subtle, but undeniable. I couldn’t help but smile, as I could imagine doing that with my own brother. Some things are universal. I guess thumb wrestling is one of those things.