When the lunch whistle blew at the loofah mill, the workers' first thought was, of course, lunch. But after they'd mown through the roast beast sangwiches and cornish pasties in their lunch pails, the biggest, toughest, orneriest mill workers would gather in the courtyard for a thumb rassle. These monstrous men, their digits strengthened by years of loofah production, often sprained or even fractured one anothers' thumbs, so intense were their battles.
On one such lunch break, Mogey and Smush watched Mule Rodriguez square off against Mouse "The Trap" von Trapp.
"Mule's going to dominate," Smush whispered. "Look at him - he's got his game face on."
"I'm not so sure," Mogey replied in an equally low tone. "He might just be queasy. I saw him gobbling down an obviously rancid pasty earlier."
"Wanna make things interesting?" queried Smush.
"You're on!" Mogey replied.
Mule won the first two matches of the seven-match series with ease, celebrating the victories with his trademark "Hee-haw jig." But The Trap came roaring back, winning three of the next four matches. And so it all came down to the pivotal seventh match.
The pure power of Mule's massive pollex seemed destined to prevail, but The Trap's thumb hunted Mule's like a mongoose hunts a king cobra: patiently waiting and then striking with surgical precision. At the very moment when it seemed Mouse "The Trap" von Trapp had worn Mule Rodriguez down and would soon strike the killing blow, an entire wedding cake crashed onto the table, covering both combatants, and - more importantly - their thumbs.
The courtyard was thrown into chaos: so entranced had all the bystanders become by the match that not a single person saw who had dropped the cake. By longstanding tradition, in a thumb rassle tie, the competitor with the least amount of punctuation in his name was declared the winner. It was a Mule Rodriguez victory.
"What were you thinking?" Smush demanded as his pal came scurrying back. "You were about to win our bet!"
"What bet?" Mogey said, licking a telltale bit of frosting from his forearm. "I sure made things interesting, didn't I?"
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