Early on, Lily started playing with her fingers as puppets. I’m not sure how many kids do this, although I recall that my brother and I did use our hands as puppets for quite a while when we were kids. Anyway, she would often amuse herself at mealtimes by having her fingers walk around, have conversations with each other, and run races around and between her plates and cups. Eventually this kind of play led her to wanting my fingers to interact with hers, and a sort of cast of characters quickly became established. Let me introduce you to them:
Index: Dad Finger – while Lily’s fingers are almost always kids, my index is their dad
Middle: Mom Finger – serves the same purpose as Dad Finger, and actually the two are kind of interchangeable. Actually, f only one “parent” is present, it’s always the index
Ring: Doctor Finger – After experiencing a few trips to the hospital when she was younger (and what kid doesn’t), Lily regularly began working injuries into her play, and often dolls or other characters would fall off something and have to be taken to the hospital, where “Doctor Finger” gives them a check-up and an X-ray, then puts a bandage on them or gives them a shot and sends them on their way. This is one of my favorites… because let’s be honest, “Doctor Finger” is just fun to say.
Pinky: Baby Finger – The child of Mom and Dad Finger… only talks in baby-sounds (like “meh”, which Lily finds hilarious). The only weird part about this is that Mom and Dad Finger can’t actually touch their child… try having your index and middle fingers give your little finger a “hug”, and then let me know if you can figure out a way to do it without spraining anything.
Thumb: King Thumb – This rarely-seen character is the ultimate voice of authority, and only shows up when some sort of official declaration has to be made
So that’s how it works. Now comes the interesting part. Lily, for her part, doesn’t have a regular cast of characters for her own hand, save for one. At any moment while we’re playing, either one of her index fingers can become “Mad Finger”, a kind of mildly malevolent force that throws wrenches into the plans of her other toys. When they might be trying to build something or go somewhere, the Mad Finger might suddenly pop up and announce “The door is locked!” or “You can’t go in there!” in a deep voice… or at least, as deep as Lily can muster at four years old.
The Mad Finger also has some magical powers as well, mostly in the form of “magic glue”, which will keep a door or other opening barred even after the Mad Finger leaves. One of her most clever ideas with this happened when we were playing with her mini Lalaloopsy figurines and their little dollhouse… while one of them was using the little green-string “garden hose” to water her garden, the Mad Finger came along, took the hose, stuck the nozzle in the second-story window, then closed the shutters and fastened them with magic glue, so that the hose would flood the entire upstairs of the house. It took the rest of the Lalaloopsys a good half hour to first, evacuate all their pets up to the attic so they wouldn’t get wet, and second, figure out how to open the shutters to get the hose out. I can’t remember exactly how a solution was reached, but eventually things do work out, often with Mad Finger having a change of heart and undoing what’s been done.
Lately, Mad Finger has been working his/her/its way into our bedtime stories too. While I’m reading to her, Lily will stick her finger alongside the page, making her index finger part of the story. In these cases, Mad Finger doesn’t want to cause trouble, just to be included, so I’ll find myself adding him into the story: “I do so like green eggs and ham! Thank you, thank you, Sam-I-Am… and Mad Finger.”
I suppose on the surface, the whole concept might seem a little reminiscent of “Tony” from The Shining, with little Danny crooking his finger and growling “Danny’s not here, Mrs. Torrance.” (shudder) But this doesn’t seem to be anything like that. And I’ve formulated a theory about it…
Storytelling is about conflict. There’s always a problem that has to be overcome, some common cause for the cast of characters to work together for. And up until recently, the worlds that Lily has gravitated toward really haven’t had characters that regularly work contrary to the goals of the rest. When I look at the worlds she’s enjoyed so far, starting with Fisher-Price people, then moving on to Littlest Pet Shop, Lalaloopsies, and Strawberry Shortcake, all the characters involved have been friends. There are no “bad guys”, just friendly characters who work together. And since Lily has only just started to make characters’ feelings be the central point of the story – what can we do to make so-and-so feel better, why are those two characters not getting along – she’s needed some kind of external force to get the plot going. That’s where Mad Finger comes in.
Lately I’ve been trying to delve a little deeper into the psychology of Mad Finger… when Lily’s not particularly sleepy and I’m putting her to bed, MF will show up just to make his presence known, and maybe get me to stick around in Lily’s bedroom for a little while longer while I talk to him. Once he told m that he has a family, a mom and dad and a sister, and that they’re all “nice”. Apparently, he’s the only one in his family who’s Mad. In the past, whenever I’ve asked him what he’s mad about, he won’t have a clear answer: “I don’t know. I just am.” Lately, in discussions about his family, he’s been saying that he was “just made that way”. I suppose there’s something there to be understood about a child’s mind, and how good and bad are absolutes with no reason behind them. They’re just “that way”. It’s not until later that you understand that even people who do “bad things” think they’re the right thing to do, it’s just their perspective that is skewed.
It’s interesting how Mad Finger continues to persist, even when “bad guys” are starting to become more present in Lily’s imaginary worlds… the recent reboot of The Electric Company and even Care Bears have characters whose actions cause the conflict of the stories. I suppose eventually Mad Finger will be phased out for more malevolent characters. For now, though, I’m kind of impressed how Lily has managed to go from just playing with characters to constructing stories about them, stories that necessarily need some kind of problem introduced. I don’t think that she had any experience with these kinds of stories before she created Mad Finger… is it possible that she just somehow instinctively *knew* that such a character needed to be introduced?
