There's no such thing as common sense - But this makes no sense at all, Episode IV

Let me relate just one more story about my email friend.

One day shortly after our great email debate we were talking about her difficulty in reaching people and/or having them respond to her. At one point she looked at me and said that she had tried to send me four emails recently and that I had ignored them all. As she is relaying this, she held up three fingers. I asked her to repeat her statement and again she held up three fingers. A little deeper into her story, she said she had made three attempts to call someone else, and held up two fingers. She again repeats her point and again she held up two fingers. Throughout our conversation, every time she mentioned a number, she flashed her fingers to illustrate the number she was trying to relate. And each time, the fingers did not match the number. Even when she tried to flash one, she showed the wrong number of fingers (thumb, index and middle, no kidding).

Eventually, I stopped the conversation and made a comment that  she was making a mistake. I said that when she said four, she showed only three fingers. And when she said three, she showed two fingers and so on. After I made this observation, she looked at me and said, “Oh, sometimes that happens, I have a finger that doesn’t work”. Now I started flashing my own fingers. I flashed 3, then 4 then 2 fingers. Every time, the combination of fingers changed, and it looked to me like all the fingers got used.

After a second or two of trying to determine which of her fingers didn’t work I looked at her and asked “OK, so which one is it? Which one doesn’t work?” At this point, she looked at me as said “Don’t worry about it. It’s on the other hand.”