Flipping the Bird and Farting Shoes

I have a child who points with his middle finger (or miggle finger, as my younger kids call it).

He’s done this since he was able to make his hands move as a tiny baby and it’s an endless source of hilarity for our family.

He doesn’t know what sticking up his miggle finger means in a ‘Murican cultural sense.

He doesn’t realize he’s doing anything off-color and he’s so dexterous with that thing that it’s flippin’ amazing. It can work independently of his hand and other fingers and he can pick up a speck of glitter with it or jab it in someone’s nose-hole with incredible precision.

He also likes to stick it into any hole he happens to find which has ended badly more than a couple times. The pencil sharpener was my personal favorite.

This morning, at homeschool co-op morning announcements assembly, he’s standing in the aisle in between the pews and being his normal, turddler self.

Kicking his twin.

Licking my neck.

Smelling my ear.

Throwing paper.

Randomly shrieking.

Burping.

Farting.

Waving like a parade-float Queen and drawing the attention of all the people.

Then he pauses, grins at me diabolically and sticks out his tongue. Slowly, agonizingly slowly, he cranks up his middle finger directly at me.

He’s not pointing, either.

He’s in full view of all the other 150 teachers and students and he’s flipping me the bird. Picture that old joke that naughty uncles do at Christmas where they pretend they’re rolling up their middle finger with an invisible hand crank.

That’s what he was doing.

Then he turned his hand slightly so that his miggle finger was pointed directly at my face and said, “I’m going to lick you now.”

So that was fun.

In other news, I googled “how to make my Birkenstocks stop farting while I walk” today.

My kids don’t want to walk with me in public right now. They said it’s bad enough because there’s always a good chance I’ll fart whether I’ve got Birkenstocks on or not. Now it’s a guarantee there will be flatulence.

Apparently this is a common problem and there really is no solution. You can lube them up with baby powder but that has a whole other set of issues.

I want you to know that there are some incredible farting shoe videos on YouTube.

The best solution I found was “pretend to be a vegetarian”.

The theory is, people will assume you are vegetarian because you’re wearing Birkenstocks and therefore will surmise that you eat a bunch of beans and so will naturally be expecting you to fart your o-ring out daily.

Perfect solution, interwebs.

I did not win any awards today, folks.