How do you explain to a
kid that his
middle finger means "
fuck you" when he doesn't know what "
fuck you" means?
My six year old caught his middle finger against something in the supermarket, loudy says, "DADDY!", and holds it up to me to show me. I see some old ladies gasp and turn away; they have no idea that he's hurt his finger.
"Buddy," I say, "you can't hold your middle finger up like that."
He asks me why, and I tell him, well, it means a bad word.
WHICH bad word? he wants to know.
Ouch. I guess I walked right into that one. My advice? Just ignore it, or (in my case) take your kid's hand and kiss it, or otherwise distract the kid.
See also, the shul finger incident.