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By the time I was four it became apparent that I would never be able to stop sucking my thumb. Despite the protestations of my mother and most particularly my father – ‘You stupid little baby’ – I could not face the world without a wet thumb pushed through my lips, caressing the roof of my mouth. The sensation of sweet, bony fleshiness was how I imagined a pig might feel about its trotter were it to mistakenly suck upon it while gobbling rotting Brussels or snuffling in the mud. By fourteen, my thumb was sufficiently central to my continued existence that, when other boys were trying to look cool by hanging about sucking on cigarettes, I was still hanging about sucking my thumb. As you can imagine this created a distance between me and others of my age such that the only bond with other creatures I felt were those either engaged in the same act as me, or its derivatives. Toddlers in push-chairs, babies at the breast, and any number of suckling baby animals, in particular pigs.
As my parents ran a pig farm my familiarity with pigs outweighed any other beings. Their capacity to eat and digest everything thrown into the pen, including discarded version of their own species or even their own children, fascinated me. Consequently, my internet bookmarks catalogued all species of pigs from wild and obscure Asian ones to mainstream types similar to ours. I also relished images and videos of suck-a-thumbs that I arranged in a convenient hierarchy from the relatively rare actual thumb-sucking (adult, child, baby) to tangential links to dummies, bottles, teats, and alike. I was aware that this interest could be perceived as unhealthy for a teenager, so I ensured that neither my mother or father could gain access to my computer by securing it with a password: ‘suck-a-thumb14.’ My parents were farmers so there was little danger of them gaining access to my computer, both of them being uneducated in matters technical and only really clever with pigs.
Now in my twenties, I have a computer, and I have started this video blog to realise two ambitions. One, to provide some tips for thumb-sucking; and two…