5 and 7 yr old learned about "the finger"

[mom2happy]

Yesterday I was nursing the baby and my older kids were in the hallway smiling and sticking up their middle fingers at me (backwards, though).
I know they have no idea what they are doing so I just calmly said "Nice fingers". They giggled and said, Sara on the bus told us this means something really bad.
What does it mean, mommy?
I just told them it's kind of ridiculous because it's just a finger, but someone started it a long time ago and it became a very big insult.
Im so glad I didnt talk too much or react in anyway or surely they would have an addition to their repertoire. Gosh, I was sure I dont like you, Youre horrible, and idiot were the worst I'd hear for the year.

[AllisonR]

Funny but not funny. Yesterday my DDs 3-5yo class put on a show where they sang a song and did a bunch of hand movements for the bunny rabbits... at one point they were to stick out their pointing finger, but quite a few, including my DD, shot the bird instead. A few giggles but all the parents let it slide.

[Oubliette8]

This reminds me of when I first learned the F word. I was in third grade (yes, I was sheltered) and read it on a picnic table at school. I was very confused why someone would go through all that trouble to write something that wasn't even a word on a picnic table! So I asked a friend who told me it was a word. When I asked what it meant, she said it was when you stick your middle finger at someone. Everyone knew that was bad, but noone knew why. Now I knew- it meant you were saying a bad word to them, just not out loud! Ha.

It wasn't until I got to middle school and our new gym teacher told us that if she heard any of us say that word she would call up the recipients parents and make us explain to them why we wanted ot do that to their son or daughter that it dawned on me that it meant something bit more than a forbidden hand gesture- and that the hand gesture was, er, a crude representation of said act.