Now those of you that know of the story will understand it when I say, “Tom is the only bloke that I know that can put his big toe in his ear”. Impossible!! I know … I hear you. Well look, if you lost your thumb in a work accident, what else would you expect the doctors to do but to replace it with your big toe. Makes sense doesn’t it? It is certainly more desirable than replacing it with that other extrusion of Tom’s anatomy – don’t you think? Anyway, this is not a story about our Tom’s Thumb – it is actually a story about the Tom-Thumb.
Well the tom-thumb was a cracker. What’s a cracker? – I hear you ask. A cracker is a miniature dynamite stick that was only available on cracker night. What, never heard of that either? All right, cracker night used to be a 5th November celebration of a guy called Guy Fawkes. Are you with me yet? Need more? Ok, some 350 years ago in a far away place called England this guy tried to blow up the parliament with the king inside. He failed and was executed. See, that’s why the Australian Parliament allowed us to buy crackers each year because they figured that we would be so busy blowing each other up we might just forget about them – and they were right. Every year it was the same – we blew each other up.
One of the blow-up games that David got us to play was called the-letterbox-run. This game involved us kids standing on the patio and holding a tom-thumb between your fingers. David’s job to light it. Once lit the race was on to get down the stairs, along the path, open the letterbox lid, throw it inside and close the lid – all before it exploded. Of course, to make the game more interesting, David would often light the wick half way down just to put some tension into the game and also into the hand holding tight that fiery blast. Still, this was not the only game possible for the diminutive tom-thumb. Now I have a painful confession to make – ummm … maybe later. See about this particular time us kids were all growing into adulthood fast and we were starting to get out and about so to speak – with Maggs leading the charge. She had carved up Uni and was now fully engaged with her work scene that involved some after work functions. Now as these things often go – Maggs took to the dreaded fag. Given the rather tight religious discipline at home and being surrounded by 5 younger highly influential siblings, meant that there were not many places at home for the poor girl to go and have a quiet one. The only do-not-disturb place she could find was in the loo. So with a series of shuffles and sits (be careful how you say that), she was able to do her thing and blow smoke out of the external louvered window as well. Her mastery of this technique of smoke exhaust ensured that her secret remained just that for quite some time. Until of course one of her younger brothers found a packet of durries in the toilet one day.
Now as the mischief in this boy’s mind works, he figured that there could be a real opportunity to use these ciggies in a game of chance by using his tom thumbs (the cracker). So he set it up and waited for the desired response. He did not have to wait long before a cracker bang in the loo was soon followed by a bedraggled person staggering out into the hall with a cigarette butt and tissue hanging from a smoke gaping mouth and tobacco confetti littering her eyebrows and hair. Sadly, this willful infliction of pain and shock by one human being on another just for a laugh – is a true story. Yet her magnanimous forgiveness manifests itself today with nothing but love and affection towards that younger brother in the story – and well …ummm … Tom really … really … appreciates it. Phew!
