An All-Thumbs English Conversion

“All thumbs” is one of those phrases that stumbled into English in the late nineteenth to early twentieth century, a modest little expression for the universal condition of clumsiness. If someone is “all thumbs,” they are fumbling the small mechanics of life, missing buttons, dropping screws, or turning a simple task into a train derailment, as if their fingers had all fattened into a bulky array of thumbs.

In light of all this, I need to share my absolute amazement at the ability of many young people I know to text on their smartphone with a single thumb. Not only do they text, but they do so accurately at lightning speed. I have witnessed some people one-thumbing a flawless text while driving. Never mind that they should not text and drive at once.

This skill is utterly beyond me. Just for fun, I tried a practice text a few moments ago to check my skill level. Here is what I thumbed on my smartphone: “Do hoof ddigg.”

An all-thumbs English conversion.

Here is what I was attempting to write: “Do good stuff.”

—Mitchell Hegman