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Mr. Thumbs: An American Fable


Imagine. A rock and gem show in the Armory at Martinsville, Virginia, May 2003. This is where I met Alex B, and there was another russian dealer there too, from Florida of all places. They were selling Russian Gem products, and they had BEEK jealousy between each other for some reason. The one from Florida had some imitation byzantine stuff too. He was probably the more Christian of these two Russian Jews, and lorded it over Alex maybe. I really do not know.

Alex and I had dinner a few times on that trip, and Alex is A-OK, though with an intricate and circumstance-driven agenda truly international in its scope. Like many people, I suppose. And thats another story. The main reason Alex is even coming up here is because he and I did a cool field trip at that show, weather was crap, but we found good garnet crystals in matrix and netti still has one of the rox, its a 60 pound spike that sits upright, all run through with pyropes as big as grapes!

I also met the dealer of Indonesian Petrified wood there too, name of Paul, a young father, who sold decorator sized pieces, browns, blacks, some whites, but rare species, and LARGE. He was from Greensboro. He and I did a trade, he got a hand-crafted rattlesnake belt with a knife buckle, I got a real nice piece of the polished wood -- a limb, weighed about 35 pounds. His chair and mine were directly in sight during the show, its just how the booths were set up, and we shared the view, basically, even though we were separated by a good distance and by other booths.

I had independently field-tripped as well, which was what my bus adventures really were all about, and I had checked into and collected the fairy crosses that manifest there near Martinsville, the twinned staurolite crystals which are very odd and interesting things. Crystals possess order and order effects all near it in kind of like an aura so where crystals grow are auras of order and thats not too hard to see or figure out.

I also checked a real large open area across from the Martinsville Walmart. That site was huge, where a mountain was being moved. I got a bunch of flats of tourmaline in quartz for my troubles. I even put some out at the show, and maybe even sold one or two. The Martinsville show is over 40 years old I think, and even though it hosts the show yearly, Martinsville itself has no rock club per se.

I guess thats why Mr. Thumbs got so excited when he saw the local specimens I had out. I call him Mr. Thumbs because I never did really know his name, though we shook hands once, and I am sure he told me his name; but no matter he is Mr. Thumbs to me because he was just one of many people I met in a short period of time, and the main reason I remember him at all (getting old, sux) is because of his thumbs.

He walked up to my booth with his thumbs stuck in the pockets of his faded levis, and he was perfect. Dude was perfect. Every hair, every tooth, nothing out of place. Perfect height, perfect weight, perfect skin color. The fading of the levi jeans? Perfect. He smiled perfectly and we began a conversation.

Truth be told, he was also a perfect horses ass, and this became evident right away as he proceeded to question me about various samples and specimens I had on my table. Mr Thumbs had yet to learn that ignorance is 100% curable.

Oh Well.

Mr. Thumbs was becoming a nuisance and I was wishing he would buy something and go away, and failing that, just go away. But, ever polite, I continued to humor him, and that was a mistake, because when you do things like that, many times, things just go from bad to worse. Things hardly ever get better. He had resorted to thumbs back in the pockets of the Levis, and I took this as a hopeful sign.

It was then that Mr. Thumbs saw the tourmaline in quartz I had picked up right down the street. And I now know what apoplexy means. He fumbled the specimen all around between the fingers of both hands, which looked for all the world like two big spiders walking upside down, and it was like, like, like the rock was shocking him or something, yeahhhhh.

My eyes got kind of big, I am sure. I looked to my right, and Paul, bored, was watching this too. He could not hear from where he sat, but as I said, a clear view.

Mr. Thumbs had starting making funny noises too: HEY AY0-AY... EY EYYYYYY EHHHHH EHHHHH UMMMMM....I---I---I---I---I---I---I---I---I........BEFORRRRRRRRE...

My eyes, I am sure, got even bigger. I was beginning to think Mr. Thumbs worked for US Intel. I think many people in Martinsville work for US Intel. Among a few other things, its proximity to DC is a factor in my deduction too. And yet again, another story. Then Mr. Thumbs does something that CONVINCES me he is an intelligence employee, as defined by the FED, the TREASURY, the CIA, the FBI, the NSA, and the agency this jokester obviously belonged to: the SUK.

His noise making had become something of a yakkity yak yak background noise to me, as I watched other potential clients sidling around the man, with worried looks on their faces. One though, a customer across the aisle, was turning to see what this unnaturally loud yakkity yak racket was all about...

I am sure my face was screwed up in something like distaste at all this, or as close as I come to that in public, but that look disappeared quickly, to be replaced with one of shock, and wide eyed horror as Mr. Thumbs says:

--Yak yak AND I BET I KNOW WHERE YOU GOT THIS!-- He hollers, YOU GOT THIS RIGHT DOWN THERE! and he punctuates this loud exclamation by jabbing his right thumb backward over his right shoulder, hard, thereby indicating the southerly direction which was, indeed, from whence had come the cursed specimen.

Just as he jabbed backward hard though, the customer across the aisle had by some evil genius positioned himself perfectly and BOINK right in his EYE, man!

I saw this happen, I heard the squish, and I heard the man yelp, and there is no way any of that could have been faked with such realism. Mr Thumbs drops the rock on the table, breaking a dish, making things all that much worse, but when he realized what he did, to the guys eye I mean, he went to freaking out, whips out the wallet, wants to give the guy money, wants one of everything I got, not really but almost, and the whole time he turned as bright red as fully ripe tomato.

I had turned my initial horrified look upon Paul, across the room, and I am sure we mirrored each other, his eyes were as big a round as silver dollars, and both our eyebrows must have been raised high enough to look like bad toupees.

Mr. Thumbs boogled his butt right out the door after that, and I did see the other man, the VICTIM of Mr. Thumbs, later in that day, and yes, he had himself a good little shiner going on.

The moral of this story is: delaying necessary unpleasantness almost always prolongs and increases it.