Fingerlings

Oh! Rhu's remembering sparked my remembering too! (Again)

When we lived in New Jersey, every summer we would travel the three and a half hour from our house to visit our grandparents in Maryland. At that point, our main transport was a Dodge Malibu called "Fat Albert" after the cartoon character Dave and I both loved, voiced by Bill Cosby (Who was and is to this day bar-none the comedian everyone in my family adores. Dad discovered him when he was in I SPY and has been a life-long fan, Mom discovered him in the Cosby Show and entered into the adoring of him, and Dave and I discovered him in Fat Albert and the Gang in reruns and promptly followed suit) and it had seats covered in a pale brown vinyl. Wretched material, created for the sole purpose of torturing children. In the winter when I would wear skirts to school and church it was so cold and slick it was impossible to keep balanced on the seat so that the belt didn't cut into my hips and stomach. In the summer it was worse, skirts or shorts were murder because the backs of my thighs would stick to the vinyl and peeling myself off the seat when we were wherever it was we were going was sheer hell. The worst possible thing however was the summer 3 1/2 hour trip to my Grandparents, because of the vinyl, because Dave and I would be forced into close proximity to one another in a hot, close space, and also because Skipper who was our beloved dog at all times save that car trip would be wedged between us. Unlike neutral Switzerland, Skipper didn't sit peacefully and allow Dave and I to exchange threats. He was a hyperactive Germany intent on escaping the car by any means, including windows, and sadly Dave and I each possessed a window in our territory of the backseat. He continually invaded our area, scratching bare legs, slobbering on whatever books we were trying to read or tapes we were trying to get into our personal cassette players to listen to, and also working to sit on our laps with his his hot, smelly, furry body so he could ram his nose out the window and then his skull, and then the upper part of his body, and then jump out and escape.

It was during one of the three and a half our trips that Dave came up with "Fingerlings" which was to be an amusement that like FirstOnes went everywhere with us and we taught to others. Here is how to make a fingerling, if I had a camera I'd give you a visual but here's some simple instructions, and most of you have probably done something similar anyway. So without further ado take one of your hands (it doesn't matter which) and curl up your ring and pinky fingers tight against your palm as if you were going to make a fist, but leave the thumb, the index finger and the middle finger loose. Good! Now, the thumb and the middle finger are the Fingerling's legs, and the index is the head/neck of the creature which if you half close your eyes could perhaps look a little like a brachiosaurus. I said, a little like. *Ahem* Anyway, that is a Fingerling. Our were incredibly curious and mischievous creatures. Right Fingerling would fight left Fingerling and kill it, and then begin to eat the dead Fingerling. Hey, Dave and I got so good with them that they were better than hand puppets. We could show shame, anger, happiness, fear, and a variety of other emotions with our Fingerlings. This game was played a lot in the car, and most especially in boring stores (meaning any that weren't toy stores) where the Fingerlings could explore the racks of clothing, dusty glass shelves and pretty much anything else in the store that wasn't breakable.

The benefits of the Fingerlings were that:
1) We couldn't lose them or leave them behind (they were after all attached to our bodies)
2) Didn't run on batteries
3) Amused us for hours and hours of time and allowed our parents to shop relatively unmolested by "Mom/Dad can I have this/get this

The only down side really was that people who saw our fingerlings often stared as if we were insane. Obviously the benefits outweighed the drawbacks and Dad and Mom encouraged this game for years and years.



Good Memory Jog Rhuness!

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