Jane squished her finger in the door.

Not a mangled bleeding smash but a decently painful squish. She came to me, crying and holding it.  I did the concerned mom thing, “Are you alright? Let me see it?” Jane did the woeful child thing and sniffled as she held out her, seemingly fine, hurt middle finger.

Then she looked down at her middle finger extended toward me and cried,

“I’m soooorrryyyyy! I think I just swore at you with my finger!” and collapsed face down on the bed.

It was good that she was face down in a pillow while I worked on controlling the middle schooler trapped in a mom’s body thing so that I was able to get back to the concerned mom thing by the time she picked her head up. I gave it a kiss and told her not to worry about it and that her finger was going to be fine and that was the last we heard about it for a few hours.

Later the subject of swearing with your finger came up again. That was when my suspicions were confirmed. The kids might learn things like reading and math facts at school, but the real learning happens on the bus on the way home. Jane relayed the story of the boy on the bus telling her all about how to swear with her finger then looked at me with a grin and said,

“Mom, wanna see me swear with my face?”

Middle schooler in a mom’s body showed right back up. “Well, Yeah!”

“Just kidding Mom,” Jane said with a laugh, “You can’t swear with your face.”