Bizarre things tend to happen to my family. Sometimes its little things, like being stopped at a red light and suddenly water just starts pouring on my car (mine and no one else's), or sometimes it's things like walking into my class and there are fliers posted everywhere that say "Worried About Ray?" and give a phone number to call just in case you are (after calling it, I realized no one is really worried about me, but are just trying to get you to go to some Web site).
But then, there are those occasions when you know you are very much alone in an experience, like watching an Amish man wear a baseball cap and smoke a cigarette in San Diego. Or better yet, the occasion when a freak accident caused my father to unintentionally cut off one of his friend's thumbs.
Sometime during the hazy seventies that monopolized my father's youth, he really did cut off someone's thumb. My family and close family friends have even titled this event "The Thumb Story."
One night, my father was picking up some of his friends. He was the oldest of them, and naturally had to drive them everywhere. Well, this one night my father was driving his friends around. In the backseat, some guy who my father says is a little weird, holds up some tow cables tied in a noose.
He showed it to my father, who smiled and kept paying attention to the road. Then, my father felt a sudden backward jerk of the car. He was ready to scold his friend until his friend showed my father his hand.
There was no thumb.
What had happened was this: a freak accident. My father's friend had made a noose-like thing and threw it out the window onto a parked car's side mirror. And because the planets were all aligned with the stars in just the right way, my father's friend lost his thumb.
Naturally my father rushed to the hospital, and the doctors said they had three hours to find it. Well, my father rushed back to the scene, found the rope, but no thumb. The thumb was missing. They looked and looked, and nothing. So they went back to the hospital, thumbless, and this poor man was without a thumb forever.
Well, it was Christmas Eve in New York when an elder woman was walking her dog. The dog found the thumb, and the police were notified. The police started searching the grounds believing a body had been chopped up and buried in this area. My father and his friend went to the courthouse because my father's friend wanted his thumb back. They walked into the judge's chambers, and his friend said (and this is the only part of the story that my father remembers verbatim): "Give me back my f-ing thumb before I get you for thumb-napping."
The judge looked at this man, and asked for proof that it was his thumb. My father's friend ripped off the bandage, and showed him the missing appendage. The judge then handed my father's friend his thumb and the two were reunited once again, just not attached.
I never did believe my father when he told me "The Thumb Story," until he whipped out a newspaper as evidence, but now I know even he couldn't make up that story. What's ironic about all of this is my father is Italian, from New York, and when limbs go missing around Italians, some certain questions are asked. I'm lucky I never did ask for too many details.
But the moral of the story is this: While you're off on spring break, steer clear of my father, and more importantly, hang on to your limbs.
Ray Ceo, Jr. is counting ten fingers … and nine toes. Help him find his missing toe at: raymond.ceo@asu.edu.
