After over 90 years it's still a good story. When I was a little girl sitting on Papa's lap, I played with his mustache and fingers. I often noticed that his right thumb had a sharp ridge. "Why is your thumb so funny?" I asked him and he said, "That is what kept me out of the army. You can't be a soldier if you can't pull the trigger on your gun." Many Jewish boys did such things to avoid having to serve 25 years in the Russian Army. You may read more such stories in my memoir "Weather of the Heart."