A little 5-year-old girl became the center of attention in Essex, U.K. after holding up her middle fingers for a whole 20 minutes during a 30-minute Christmas play at her school.
Her mother Carla Bovingdon was clearly embarrassed at her daughter’s rude gesture as the 5-year-old stood in front of the other parents dressed as an angel with a silver tinsel halo while holding up the birds.
Carla admitted that while what her daughter Ella was doing was something inappropriate, the reason was innocent. Ella did it because she had accidentally pulled a hangnail on one of her middle fingers and was holding it up to show her mom.
“Bless mason and Ella in their school play, it’s just a shame Ella spent the whole time trying to show me she’d hurt her middle finger,” Carla wrote on Facebook.
Carla said at first, her daughter just held up one middle finger which was in pain due to the hangnail, however, she eventually cranked the other one up in order to compare her hurt finger to her non-injured one.
Her mother confirmed that she did this for 20 full minutes out of the half-hour performance.
“It was pretty much for the majority of it, she was there with her middle finger up,” Carla explained, according to the Independent. “Because I didn’t run over there she kept holding it up as if she was saying, ‘Mum, look!'”
Of course, Ella holding up her middle fingers drew a lot of attention to her.
“A couple of the teaching assistants had a bit of a giggle,” Carla recalled. “I was thinking, ‘Oh god, Ella please stop.’ Because she was doing it so innocently, I think most people were thinking, ‘Oh bless her.’ That’s what made it so funny as well, because she was completely oblivious.”
Carla posted photos of her daughter during the play to her Facebook back on December 10, 2019.