Bandaged brother finger = flip off teacher

For reference if you’re not understanding the headline, if you haven’t heard of the Finger Family Song, count yourself blessed. The long and short of it is as opposed to teaching children a song telling them the names of the fingers as thumb, index, middle, ring, pinky, they sing about it being daddy (thumb,) mommy (index,) brother (middle,) sister (ring,) baby (pinky).

Today Maggie, my three and a half year old, was going for a Z-Bar before school and managed to get her middle finger caught in a Lazy Susan causing some pain and a very minor flesh wound. I mean we’re talking little scratch on the top of her middle finger.

Being as it was visible (if perhaps only under a microscope,) she demanded a Star Wars Band-Aid to make her finger feel better. I placed the bandage on carefully noting that it was on her flippy the bird finger and I decided to take proactive measures as I knew what was going to happen.

“Maggie, when you show people your Band-Aid, make sure you show them the other fingers too so they know you don’t have more injuries and are hiding them.” I thought that might work and we talked a bit in the car about how some people might take the middle finger as an insult.

I don’t really expect her to remember all of this, but I figured if at least I hit it from a few different angles we’d be set.

We walked into school and her teacher was talking to another parent. Maggie said “look at this!” and flipped her the bird in front of at least one kid who knew exactly what that meant.

I worked very hard to keep on adulting, mentioned to the teacher that we’d tried to work on this before we got in, and was assured that it was understood exactly how much a Band-Aid is a trophy to be shown off however possible.