THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, May 13, 1995 TAG: 9505130009
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A13 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
SOURCE: George Hebert
LENGTH: Medium: 55 lines
Pointing a finger at something to direct others' eyes - became a common practice, I suspect, pretty early in the development of human communications.
I also suspect that the purpose of such pointing has been frustrated time and again, right from the beginning. This particular piece of sign language, despite its persistent, almost automatic use, just isn't a very good tool.
Let's say a companion wants to call my attention to something - perhaps a person in the milling crowd at the mall, or one tree in a row of trees, or a window in a multiwindowed apartment house where a cat has just appeared and might appear again, or a squirrel nest high overhead in the woods amid scads of other dead-leaf clumps that could be squirrel nests, too.
My companion points. But odds are that my eyes can't pick out the designated object, however steady and well-aligned the extended arm and finger may be.
The problem is the assumption that I can pick up the pointing finger's line of sight from my position off to one side, do a little mental triangulation and zero in - eureka! But much of the time, unless I have some other clue, I just can't see what I'm supposed to see. And I'll bet plenty of others have the same trouble in similar circumstances.
The difficulty is readily apparent when somebody who knows a little - or a lot - about the stars and planets tries to help someone else to see a particular phenomenon up there in the night sky. There may be enough dim light to discern the pointer's finger, but beyond that, all may be glittering confusion for the impromptu astronomy apprentice.
However, there is a reasonably good remedy in this case, something I can trace to my Boy Scout days. A narrow flashlight beam, despite its actual range limit, seems to thrust far out into the cosmos and is quite a handy pointer for nailing the North Star or outlining the Little Dipper or Cassiopiea or Orion, et al. Even a small flashlight with a tight beam can do the job.
I also remember the time, perhaps before I started school, when my father despaired of getting me to see a bird he had spotted deep in the foliage of a tree outside one of our windows. His imaginative answer was to make a small tube out of yellow typing paper (he kept a stack of second sheets around), line it up on the bird with his eye, then hold it steady while I peered through.
But the flashlight and the paper tube are fringe solutions. For the most part, I suppose that pointless pointing is one of life's little befuddlements we'll just have to live with. MEMO: Mr. Hebert is a former editor of The Ledger-Star.
by CNB