Categories: denmark, postcards
Date: 17 February 2008 21:10:36
Tommelise is the original Danish name of Hans Christian Andersen's story usually known in English as Thumbelina. Readers may remember the story from childhood of the little girl who was born the size of a thumb. "Tomme" in Danish means "thumb" and was also the word used for "inch" in their pre-metric days.
A Turkish chap who was sitting in the neighbouring seat on the flight to Copenhagen - actually, he was sitting in MY seat but this baby bear was too polite to turf him out - had been mucking about with his mobile phone (which is how I knew he was Turkish... all the instructions were in that language) - and fell asleep during the flight. As I turned over a page of my newspaper, I happened to glance down and notice his hands resting on his stomach. There is nothing strange about that - except that his thumbs were exactly the same shape as mine!
I have been teased about the unusual shape of my thumbs since childhood and they seem to cause great interest to many people. For me, of course, they are perfectly normal and they are a matching pair. Over the years, I began to think that they are rather unique. Clearly, not entirely unique, for there is a Turk wandering around with an identical pair.
I related this little incident to my friend, the Great Dane, with whom I was staying and he commented that he believed the cause was a recessive gene. Readers: after years of believing myself to be rather special in the thumb department I have had to face the fact that I am abnormal. I am still coming to terms with the shock.