I’ve always found it fascinating how kids everywhere do the same basic stuff to and with each other, the only differences are in what these activities are called. Farting, for instance, can be known as a poot, putt, toot, cut one ad infinitum . What I’m interested in at the moment is that almost universal form of painful annoyance where one puts the tip of one’s thumb in front of the middle finger, tenses the muscles, then lets the middle finger fly against the victim’s skull. The hardness of the fingernail helps it to sting effectively. We used to call this a “thimp”. From friends who’ve grown up in other places I’ve heard “thork”, “thwack”, “thumper”, and (how this evolved I know not) “monkeybunks”.
What did you and your friends call this? And did you have a different name for the earlobe variation?
Another flick. My mother used to make all of us kids sit in the row in front of her during church so she could flick our ears if we got rowdy during the sermon.
I postulate that thip and thimp are onomontopeic representations of the sound made by the fingernail against the thumb (i.e., the sound the thimper hears), whereas thwack and thork are representations of the sound the fingernail makes striking its target (i.e., the sound the thorkee hears).
I am unable to form a hypothesis about monkeybunks.
FTR, a “thwack” is when you take your marching band folder (with all the marching charts in it), roll it up into a cylinder and smack a guy in the nuts with it. Ha ha…sigh