"Man from the South"

I enjoyed reading the Man from the South story from Roald Dahl. It was about a bet between an older man and a soldier. The solider was to light a lighter successfully 10 times in a row without fail. If the solider lost, the old man got to chop off his pinky finger. If the solider won, the old man had to give the soldier his Cadillac, which we found out later was not even his, but his wife’s instead. The soldier in the story thought that losing his pinky finger would not be that big of a deal and that “it doesn’t do anything for him anyway,” but assuming the solider lost the bet, he would realize that the pinky, along with the rest of the fingers, all serve a function in our hand strength and movements.

The solider would have a difficult time completing his necessary tasks on his ship if he lost his little finger. The little finger provides a lot of hand strength for many different activities and losing it would mean losing a lot of strength. Navy soldiers have to do a lot of maintenance and repairs on their ships, so holding onto heavy tools and using them effectively would be more difficult for the soldier. Additionally, if the solider has to use a firearm, the weight of the weapon, correctly holding the weapon, and firing it accurately would be much a more complicated activity for the soldier to carry out as it is already a complex task. The solider would have to do learn how to modify things to accommodate his weakened hand strength and would have to do activities to gain back some of the strength, however, it will never be as strong as before.

I was shocked to read the part in the story about the old man’s wife. It is clear that she had played this bet against her husband many times as she now only has one finger and a thumb on her hand. The story mentioned how she had come back from getting her hair washed, so it is obvious that this has become a difficult task for her to do on her own. This made me think of other activities of daily living that would be difficult for the wife. Trying to hold her toothbrush in one hand and squeezing toothpaste onto it with the other hand would be significantly harder, no matter which hand held which item. Something the wife could invest in to make this easier is a hands-free toothpaste dispenser that hangs on the wall. You push the toothbrush against a lever type mechanism and the toothpaste is squeezed out onto the brush.