A Finger in the Eye

Every now and then, when Albert is telling a story and getting himself a bit carried away, he sticks his finger underneath his eye, and contorts his face to emphasis some relevant point.

I’ve always thought it a rather ridiculous and superfluous thing to do and wondered where he picked up the habit.

Yesterday, on the television, I saw an old man being interviewed about Barcelona’s victory over Madrid (in soccer/football), and he was asked ‘how did you celebrate Barca’s victory?’ The old man answered ‘My wife is from Catalonia and we celebrated in the way we know how. See if you can understand that.’ And he stuck his finger under his eye and did the same open mouth and raised eyebrow expression I’d previously associated with Albert.

So, after all of my detective work, I discover it’s a facial custom of the area equivalent to our eye brow raising in moments where we think we are being rather clever and indicating to our listeners that they will have to think for themselves because we will not explain everything at this point in the story.

Elementary, my dear Watson.