satan-fingers

An eleven-panel SMBC comic. A wild-eyed father confronts his young son: "Son! Have you been touching yourself? You'll get the Satan-fingers!" He explains that the boy's hands now have evil powers: to find 9 times 5, hold up your fifth finger and count the fingers on either side. The boy does it, getting fingers "4 and 5" for the answer "forty-five." The father cries "Satan-fingers!" then mutters "Or perhaps it's just a coincidence..." The boy tries again with 9 times 9, holding up his ninth finger and counting "8 and 1" for eighty-one. The father, triumphant and crazed, shouts "You got the Satan-fingers! I knew it, boy! Confess! Confess your sins!" The terrified, weeping boy confesses "I did it! I did it! I'm garbage! Garbage!" In the final panel, the father (now in silhouette) calmly admits: "Actually, it's an interesting property of nines, and I hate you, and now you'll never forget!" The joke: the finger trick is a real arithmetic shortcut for the nine times table, which the father weaponized as cruel fake religious guilt so his son would remember it. Votey (aftercomic): a close-up of the son's anguished face shouting the insult "Auto-fornicator!"