The pinkie, the humble fifth finger, has long been viewed as a decorative accessory, something to extend daintily from a wine glass. So what would you lose if you didn’t have one?

“You’d lose 50 percent of your hand strength, easily,” said Laurie Rogers, an occupational therapist who is a certified hand therapist at National Rehabilitation Hospital in Washington. She explained that while the index and middle fingers function, with the thumb, in pinching and grabbing  zipping zippers, buttoning buttons  the pinkie teams up with the ring finger to provide power.

I learned this for myself last April, when I tripped while jogging and my 132-pound frame crashed onto the bone at the base of my right pinkie, a bone the width of a pencil. It snapped at the metacarpophalangeal, or MCP, joint, where the finger links with the hand.

Five months later, my finger would not bend unassisted. I could not make a fist, swing a tennis racket with control, or securely grasp a dumbbell or the handle of a vacuum cleaner. Because the injury occurred in my dominant hand, writing was cumbersome.