Bad Finger

I slumped over in my desk, daydreaming. My second grade teacher, Madame Omosupe, who was an African native, rambled on about animal kingdoms and randomly interjected comments pertaining to her homeland. The school board was desperate for French Immersion teachers. I looked around my class at the posters of reptiles and mammals, the times tables and French days of the week. I turned around in my desk, and noticed Joey. His hands moved on his desk as little people, I supposed, and his mouth mumbled silent words. 1

My mind drifted from my room, full of plastic dinosaurs and dinosaur themed bed covers to playing games with my mother. In our game, we used our thumbs, pinkies, fore, and ring fingers as legs, and our middle fingers as the long necks of our dinosaurs. Our arms were like long and unrealistically thick tails. Our dinosaurs talked, ate, and ran from pedators.2

Madame's angry voice brought me back to the classroom. Joey looked up at me for barely a second and went back to his finger puppets. In one of my rare, but rather dumb acts of friendship, I stuck my hand on his desk, alongside his moving hands. My dinosaur looked up at him, crooking its neck. Joey looked up, more hurriedly than last time. His eyes stared at me urgently for only a moment before he frantically waved his hands, no longer little people, but flailing alarms for the teacher. He distracted her rant. Madame's old, strained eyes with bits of fleshy pink covering her dark irises glared at him with animosity. 3

"Qu'est-ce que c'est?" She demanded more than asked, her words seeped in bitterness. 4

"Madame! Elle a pointé le doit de beurre a moi!" He stated defensively. I spun back around, and returned Madame's intense, deadly gaze. I looked down at my fingers. "Doit de beurre" means butter finger. I wondered what that was. What did he mean?5

"Anna! Vous resterez après classe avec moi!" She said, with an evil growl in her voice.6

Why did I have to stay after class with her? What had I done? And what the heck was a butter finger? Still confused about my crime, I paid the price anyhow. I stayed for detention with my face turned to the wall for thirty minutes with the assignment of thinking about what I had done. There wasn't much to think about.7

Later that night, after decorating my dinosaur coloring book, my mother initiated our game. Needless to say, I wasn't in the mood for it. Upon seeing her form the usual dinosaur shape, with the dreaded finger as the neck and head, I felt very different about it than how I always had before. It no longer represented a fun and innocent game, but a newfound obscene gesture. 8

"Mama," I said, "You know, that's a bad finger."9

"Yes, sweetie," She verified. "But we don't mean it that way."10