I was born without thumbs — but people are amazed at what I can do without them
Viewers are giving his outlook two thumbs way up.
A man who was born without thumbs claims that he can accomplish any task despite his missing digits — and that he wouldn’t change a thing. Clips of him performing difficult tasks without his biggest fingers are going viral online.
“I’m the living example that thumbs are optional,” Qiao Aalbers, 26, told Jam Press of his apparent disability-turned-superpower. In one clip with over 6.7 million views, the self-effacing English tutor even jokes that he can do everything — except hitchhike.
Originally born in China, Aalbers was adopted at four months old and taken to the Netherlands, although he claimed that the European nation never really felt like home.
In addition, lacking a set of button mashers proved to be a sense of insecurity early in life. However, the transplant then spent several years traveling across Europe, which helped boost his confidence.
Now, Aalbers has managed to forge his former source of weakness into a strength, even joking in one clip that fingers are so “pretty” that “God decided to keep two for himself.”
Now, the budding content creator regularly shares his eight-finger feats — which he achieves sans prosthetics or other adaptations — for his thousands of followers on TikTok.
His thumbless stunts include twirling a vase in his hands and screwing open a water bottle with his index and middle digits and then downing it while clutching it in his four-fingered hand.
In fact, Aalbers can perform tasks that his fully-fingered counterparts cannot, such as slipping his whole hand into a Pringles can like a modern-day Houdini.
In another clip with his girlfriend, the TikTokker claims that people “don’t have to feel sorry” for him as he can “break out of handcuffs” and receive a “20% discount on manicures.”
