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Fingers Down
I remember, when I was little, my father felt quite strongly about the rudeness of pointing. I think this sticks out in my mind because he wasn't prone to long discussions of comportment and doesn't tend to dwell on this sort of thing. But pointing was to be discouraged.
I suspect he is right. Felix has begun pointing and I have started a campaign to discourage it. This is quite difficult I realize since (as Sebastian demonstrates constantly), children learn to communicate by pointing ("Where is your nose? Good!" Where's Daddy? No that's the dog. Where's Daddy?").
But Felix has entered a phase where he does point at everything when he asks about it and in public I worry about how his gestures will be interpreted. My concerns are right, since just the other day he pointed at someone within earshot and said: "That man has a very fat belly." All sorts of corrections had to be made at that point: 1)Apology to the man within earshot. 2) Discussion of why it isn't good to say things like that about people out loud. 3)Discussion of why pointing at people isn't nice.
Finally I told him something that might be completely apocryphal, which is that in the United Nations building, one is never supposed to point, even to illustrate the location of rest rooms. One is instead to use the full hand gesture made familiar to us all by flight attendants. I don't know where I heard that or whether or not it is the case (my casual research hasn't turned up much), but it seems to have sunk in a little bit that in at least one building in town, people have to be so careful about not hurting feelings that pointing isn't permitted. (Has anyone else heard this or have I just internalized someone else's get-your-kid-to-stop-pointing gambit?)
I could just be kidding myself of course, and now I've started wondering about my own pointing habits. Here's hoping I am not the bad example to the Felix because this is one thing I'd like to nip in the bud.
posted by Elise at 8:25 AM
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mcm said...
I don't know about the U.N., but I know that at all Disney theme parks employees can only do the two-finger point you speak of (I assume it's the same one associated with flight attendants, but it's been so long since I've actually watched a flight attendant's speech!)....
10/17/2008 10:11 AM
DeadBug said...
I don't know about the UN either, but I have a friend who works for the UN so I just sent email asking if he knew anything about it any pointing protocols. Now I'm very curious too.
10/18/2008 12:17 PM
DeadBug said...
Ah ha.. the answer, though not a very helpful one.. this is verbatim, so forgive the lack of punctuation, etc.
"I cannot say for certain but believe the tour guides are told to use the two fingered point when taking people on tours, I know that some common hand gestures for us have totally different meanings in other places so generally be careful with them at wok here, but not sure if ths is covered in the breifing package for new staff at HQ, I never attended it when i came here about 11 years ago"
so still nothing definitive.
10/20/2008 6:23 AM
Elise said...
Thank you so much, and I hope it didn't put you out to do that bit of research. I have been wondering for a while what sorts of misinformation I had been feeding while encouraging less pointing and then your initial post reignited my (already smoldering) curiosity. Many thanks.
10/20/2008 12:13 PM
DeadBug said...
Not at all, took all of 3 seconds of emailing effort. :)
Eh.. as to the misinformation.. go for it.. they won't realize it's wrong for years, if ever. ;D
10/24/2008 11:36 AM
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mcm said...