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This weekend I attempted to make a boomerang out of hard timber. It took a lot of carving and grinding, which led to me to cripple a thumb. Not permanently, but enough to make me consider taking a carpentry course the next time I get creative.

Bludgeoning aside, I forcefully bent the nail upwards. It will go black within the week. If you’re making a face it’s probably because you’ve been there. Point is: my thumb is now useless, and will be for days to come.

I’m sharing my stupidity misfortune because it made me realize an amazing thing when I arrived at work the next day: I’d never used this thumb to type on a computer keyboard. How do I know this for a fact? Let me explain.

In the 9 years I’ve spent writing copy and news articles, I’ve learned that even if you severely damage a finger, you still want to use it to type. Much like handwriting, people develop a particular style for typing, from the placement of the hands over the keys, to the fingers they choose to hit certain letters or function keys. It’s not the kind of thing you can change with a few minutes of practice. Try and remember what it felt like when you had to use a different keyboard than the one you were used to. Or when a key went missing or refused to work. Even the slightest change in your typing ‘ritual’ severely affects your pace.

Similarly, I now know I’ve never used this thumb to type because as I’m writing these lines, I don’t feel the slightest urge to hit keys with it. And it’s not the pain either. When I do try to use it, the feeling is unnatural, lending further credence to my theory. It just hovers there, uselessly, watching its siblings do all the work. In all fairness, this thumb deserved to get hurt – just to remind it that it still existed.

Literally adding insult to ‘injury,’ its twin (the left-hand thumb) is almost just as lethargic. Were I not forced to use it for cut/copy/paste on a daily basis, this one too would be on an endless vacation. What I’m ultimately trying to say is that my thumbs have never made their acquaintance with the spacebar. Strangely, I use the middle finger for that 😀

So, am I a freak of nature to never have used my thumbs to type? As it turns out, I am.

I asked around friends and colleagues and I learned that most people do use their thumbs. Pinkies are the most unwilling to apply themselves (and understandably so), and ring fingers get their fair share of neglect as well. Some quick numbers from the poll (on 100 acquaintances):

• 60% make no use whatsoever of their pinkies while typing
• some (around 10%) occasionally use one pinky or the other, but never both
• 30% rarely use their left-hand thumb, but often use the right-hand thumb to hit the spacebar
• 5% use their right-hand thumb only for Ctrl and Alt
• 5% use all fingers on both hands (these were the savviest in the pool, to no one’s surprise)
• 100% said they used one thumb or the other to hit the spacebar
• over 70% reported not using a ring finger from one hand or the other (never both)
• over 90% have particular typing habits involving one hand (i.e. hitting more keys with the left hand than the right, or vice versa)
• 5% were surprised to find that they hardly used / never used a certain finger (like me)
• roughly 1/3 were well aware of their typing habits, with some claiming “I’ve tested this before”

Granted, it wasn’t a scientific study, but the results were interesting nonetheless. Now I hand it over to you guys. Does anyone else have a strange typing habit to report? 😉

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