You know what people don’t do anymore? And we used to do it all the time, as kids.

When we were trying to show, in a self-mocking way, that we were very proud of ourselves, or describing someone who was very proud of himself, we’d fold up the fingers (not thumb) of one hand the way you do when you’re just starting to make a fist, hold them in front of our wide-open mouths and make a voiceless, “Hah!” onto them (like you do to your eyeglasses when you’re about to wipe their lenses), and then we’d rub those fingernails several times very quickly up and down the middle of our chests.

We’d do this after some small public recognition, like a teacher saying, “Oh, Genie, thanks for shutting that door during the fire drill!” And then we’d perform this gesture while replying with a little irony, like, “Oh, I know; I’m quite a saint, actually.” Usually spoken with the best imitation we could do of a  British accent.

Did we think that ritzy, upper-class people all had shiny fingernails, and we were polishing ours now, because we had become like one of them?

Or what?

And when and why did that gesture die out? I haven’t seen anyone do that in years.

Please, all you Scholars of Gestures (SOGs), get to the bottom of this for me, would you?