Memory Lane
The Pinky Promise: Are You Willing to Shed Blood to Keep It (Or Break It)?
In this article, we will delve into the importance of pinky promises made in grade school and the potential repercussions of not keeping our word.
Can you remember back to grade school and the significance of a pinky promise? It felt like it was the ultimate sign of commitment and determination. God forbid you break it and have to deal with the ramifications of this incredible sin. What if you had to shed blood to break your promise? What would you do? Is your word worth paying the price in actual bloodshed?
Pinky promises were the ultimate currency of trust. This sacred bond is stronger than any legally binding contract. When two friends interlock those little fingers, you better be ready to do anything and everything to keep your word. My friend group in grade school took this to the extreme. Looking back, it is almost embarrassing to recollect the memories.
The punishment for breaking the pinky promise we implemented was a variation on Bloody Knuckles. I’m not sure if this was a common game, so I’ll give a brief description. The standard way we would play is to start by spinning a quarter and take turns flicking the edge to keep the momentum going. You better be careful not to impact the center of the coin directly, or you’ll feel the pain of that mistake. Whoever causes the coin to stop spinning must place their fist flat on the table to have their knuckles exposed and in direct contact with the table. The winning player then gets to slide the coin as hard as possible to contact the exposed knuckles. This would continue in two ways, depending on the agreement. Either the players would have agreed to continue until the first person bleeds, or the more extreme option would be to keep on going until someone has had enough and calls it quits. I can’t believe at one time, I was dumb enough to consider this a form of entertainment.
That explanation aims to give you an idea of what would happen to someone who broke a promise. In the variation we did, the person who broke a promise would have to be the one to place their knuckles on the table. The other person, who was promised something but not delivered, would then get 20 throws to cause as much damage as possible. This was our little form of grade school justice. It was effective at accomplishing its purpose at the time because you better believe breaking a promise was taken seriously.
This got me thinking about promises and how seriously people take them. As adults, do we still believe in promises and the seriousness of sticking to our word? What do you think? Do you continue to make promises, and how do you feel if you break them?
There will be a follow-up piece to this article that will explore the making of promises and how they can impact us as individuals. I’ve personally seen broken promises ruin relationships and lead to conflict that should have been easily avoidable. Even if we have grown past the pinky promise, we still attach a tremendous value to someone’s word. Everyone has their own personal feelings on this matter, and there isn’t a general consensus. Stay tuned for the next article that will delve deeper into the keeping of promises and the value of our words.
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