When I was a child, thanks to many health issues, I was terrified of the procedures and specialists I frequently faced. So my father came up with a brilliant idea: he put out his thumb, and said, “If the doctor does anything that hurts you, you squeeze my thumb with your hand. That way I’ll know that it’s hurting you.” And I’m quite sure I immediately grabbed his thumb and started squeezing it just from the overwhelming desire to have my dad save me somehow from what was coming. To a child’s mind, squeezing his thumb was a magical way to transfer all the pain from me to him. And I could survive it because I knew that this connection would save me somehow from the effects of whatever procedure I had to endure.
