‘Is it true that it’s rude to point?’ Little Tucker asked his Auntie Sam, who was cuddling him after Nana had told him off.

‘It’s more than rude,’ was her soothing reply. ‘It’s the origin of all destruction.’

Auntie Sam was famous for her crazy ideas. Tucker settled into the nest of her lap and waited for the rest of the story.

‘When the first person pointed, he cast a web out from his finger,’ she began.

‘Like Spiderman?’

‘Exactly.’ 

‘What did he point at?’

‘Anything. It doesn’t matter. A rabbit,’ his aunt decided.

‘And the rabbit got trapped?’

‘Yes. And the man sucked all the life force out of his prey, like a spider, and the rabbit became a Name. The Name lived inside the man and became a word in his language.’

‘So the rabbit was gone?’ The boy’s lower lip quivered. 

‘The rabbit still existed,’ Auntie Sam reassured him. ‘But the man couldn’t see it anymore. He could only see the image the word made in his head. Pointing made the whole world disappear, until there was nothing left to point at but language. So people pointed with words, not with fingers.’

Tucker’s mum decided enough was enough. She marched up to the pair, her lips pressed white together, and pulled Tucker out of Sam’s lap.

‘A bit touched, that one,’ Tucker heard his mum say in the kitchen later.

He heard how the words pointed to his beloved Auntie, how they made her disappear, and he cried inconsolably until bedtime.

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Would you like to know more about this story? I discuss it in Episode 111 of Structured Visions, The linguistics of tapping. You can also sign up to the Grammar for Dreamers newsletter to get monthly updates on the ideas that inspire my work.