The Finger

Yes, it is as you think. The dreaded finger. But it’s probably not as bad as you are imagining, so here’s the story.

My 6 year old daughter is supposed to fill out her reading log for school so her teacher can see what she has been reading at home every night, as well as what has been read to her by her parents.

The other night she is filling it out and I am desperately trying to be patient with her as she writes down the titles and the amount of time we spent reading. If you aren’t familiar with it, it is really hard to just sit and watch a person that has just learned to write. There is a whole lot of erasing going on. So much so that you just want to snatch that little pencil away from her and do it yourself. Or at least if you are a control freak like me you do.

So I’m trying to point to places to write things, because letters get all out of proportion and the word “The” takes up so much room that there isn’t enough space left for the other 5 words in the title. And as I’m pointing to the paper, at one point I must have used my middle finger.

My daughter breaks out of her studious mode and starts holding up her middle finger on her right hand and a smirk comes across her face. Although the palm of her hand is facing me, I still sense that something is coming about “the finger”.

She then giggles and says “You shouldn’t use this finger. It’s a bad finger.”

“Why is that?” I ask innocently. “What’s so bad about it?”

“It’s not nice,” she says.

“What’s not nice?” I ask, still avoiding the inevitable.

“It means something not so nice,” she says.

I don’t really know where to go from here, so I just come out and ask it. “What’s it mean?”

“It means you are stupid. Or something like that. Doesn’t it?” she says.

Phew! We narrowly missed that one.

“Who told you that?” I ask. I must know where this is coming from, even if I have no control whatsoever who she plays with at school. At least I will know who to be weary of.

She told me it was one of the girls she plays with whose name she has mentioned before. Yes, a girl. She must have an older sibling or something, or so I like to think.

So be it. The girl is now placed on my suspect list.

I end the conversation with “Well it’s just not the finger we are supposed to point with – we should be using this finger,” I tell her, holding up my index finger.

Thankfully that suffices and she seems embarrassed enough not to push it further. For which I am thankful, because what am I supposed to do now? Teach her what it really means? No thank you.

I'll let that happen in it's own time, the way it's been done all through the years.

So we move on.

Until the next time.