Not long ago I was picking up my kids after school as I always do. The physical education teacher happened to be outside too, shepherding some class while they waited for parents to pick them up. He took me aside, as much as that is possible in a crowd of elementary school children, and said, “You might want to talk to Paolo about his middle finger.” Huh? “He needs to know about it.” I laughed nervously and asked, “Did something happen today?” “Yeah,” he said, “ask him about it.”
Okay, great. I turn to Paolo and he’s already got his grump on. This is not an unusual after-school interaction between him and me. On most days it’s his classmate Steven reporting whether or not Paolo hit someone in class. (The other day, it was, “Paolo punched Isaiah in the eye!” When I asked the teacher about it, she said it was an honest mistake, the two boys had been roughhousing, and Paolo hit Isaiah by accident. He immediately stopped roughhousing and apologized and asked if Isaiah was alright, which he was, and by the teacher’s account, all was fine. No thanks to Steven. Because after that Paolo was very grumpy as well—no one likes a tattletale I suppose.)
On the way home after the middle finger incident I asked Paolo about it but he refused to talk. So I let it go until we came home and sat on the front stoop. He and I had a few minutes alone when he was able to share what had happened in gym class. Apparently he was harmlessly using his middle finger to point at something while talking to another student, Cardin. I’ve seen my kids do this before, use that finger to point at something, usually something on paper. Apparently Cardin recognized the middle finger as a negative symbol so he went straight to the gym teacher to complain. Naturally Paolo got in some degree of trouble for this, but he had no idea what the symbol meant or why he should not use that finger to point.
I knew this day would probably come but it’s never quite clear how one should approach it, if at all, in anticipation. This felt awkward but pretty much natural—I mean, there’s nothing like this kind of experience to teach a person a lesson about what is and what isn’t culturally acceptable.
So I told Paolo roughly what the middle finger symbolizes when you display it alone—not what it means technically, but what it symbolizes, which, translated for a five-year-old, means something “very rude” and communicates a message of hatred and “not liking someone at all,” showing them “total disrespect.” (As anyone who has displayed the symbol knows.) I explained that in some cultures, it would mean nothing, but in ours, it’s a powerful, mean symbol, and he’s not allowed to use it. To soften the emphasis on the middle finger, I also explained that our symbol for “okay” (circle with the index finger and thumb) is actually a very rude symbol in other cultures. Things like this vary around the world and it helps to know what’s rude and what’s not where we live. (If we ever move to another culture where the rules change, I’ll have something to refer back to.)
Several days later Vigil was out in the back yard conversing with Luis next door, who was up on his second-floor balcony. The boys are both four years old. Luis was repeatedly asking, “Vigil, can I come to you house?” in his Spanish accent. Vigil had to turn him down, per my instructions, because it was time to come inside for lunch. From the kitchen I could hear Vigil responding to Luis, “No, you can’t come over, I have to go eat lunch.” Then a dramatic pause. Then Vigil again, “Luis, that’s your middle finger.”