Tipsy Fingers

"It's my turn to open the cereal!"

"No, it's not!"

"It is! You did it last time!"

"No, you did!"

Louise could feel pressure building listening to her children sniping, and like Mount St. Helens, she felt she was going to explode.

Luckily, she had had the foresight to put who had opened the last packet on the calendar, where it sat with an incongruous jumble of dental appointments, school meetings and "Word of the Day" trivia and so she was, in her role as peacekeeper, able to announce the winner.

She begrudged the cereal companies and their money-making ideas. Putting gifts into the actual food for kids to fish out may have seemed like genius by some enthusiastic marketing assistant but it was just another thing in her life that she was having to manage.

This time it was in connection with a new cartoon called "Tipsy Fingers", which followed the adventures of Tipsy, a thief in the vein of Robin Hood, do-gooding by stealing from miserly, mean, older people with a proven track record for being bad. To do this successfully, she had a variety of different finger adornments depending on what was required on the heist, which slotted over her existing finger and were easy to carry around; for example, there was one with a sharper fingernail for cutting into something and one which was a finger torch, called the "Tipsy Torch".

There was much excitement about what was in the box. Louise tried not to think about the health implications as her seven year old, Darren whose nose was permanently snotty, rummaged in the cereal to find the prize.

"Mum! Mum! I think there's two," as he pulled out a luridly coloured plastic-wrapped toy, put it on the table and went in again.

"Let me have a go!" Louise's five year old, Alice cried and tried to grab the box.

But Darren was too quick.

Louise had her back to the kids.

"Ugh! What's that?" Alice said.

Turning, she wasn't surprised to see Darren holding up what he had retrieved during his second delve; however, she was surprised and horrified to register that it appeared to be the tip of a finger.

***

366 words

I don't know if you ever had this but one of the things that I remember clearly about growing up is toys in cereal and the excitement of finding them and arguing with my brother over them. What I also clearly remember is cracker toys and how utterly crap they were, except the fortune-telling fish and the fingernail, hence the picture.

This story has been inspired by both of these things and been combined in a rather horrid tale of nasty surprise.

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