[Ads-l] pinky-swear

[Jonathan Lighter]

Front page of "The First Church of Springfield Weekly Bulletin" on the
_Simpsons_:

"Local Boy Sees Heaven
Pinky Swears It's True"

At first I wondered who Pinky was. Pinky Lee?  Naaaah.

I remember my grandmother doing the linked-pinky thing long ago (ca1957)
but it indicated a solemn promise rather than an oath of truth. (Close
enough? I don't think so.)  Definitely she didn't seem to have a word for
the ritual. You just did it.

My strong impression was that pinky-linkin' went back to her own childhood
in the 1890s. Or at least to my mother's in the early 1920s.

JL

-- 
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

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