For those of you who don’t know, E.T. was brought to life by two little people and twelve-year-old boy born without legs. A professional mime was used to move his hands.

I know this because in an effort to help Henry overcome his fear of E.T.’s head, I’ve been explaining to him that E.T. is a puppet. E.T. is a make believe character from a movie and he is not real. That means E.T. is not hiding in the shower or the closet and you will not see his head looking at you through the window.

Knowing this has made Henry feel a little better. He can tell you all about the little boy with no legs and he can also tell you what a mime is. However, it wasn’t easy to explain miming and when the boys seemed confused by my miming demonstration I turned to YouTube, which is where I found this:

The introduction claims that the film is 112 years old. I guess that made me think it was authentic. I don’t know why because I saw the funnyordie.com logo in the corner of the screen. But whatever, I played it anyway. And then I didn’t really pay attention to what we were watching. And it wasn’t until about one minute and 18 seconds into the clip that I realized what was going on.

If you didn’t just watch the clip, she’s a prostitute and she is using her hand to get it done. Prime parenting moment, Hannah! Really!?

Luckily, when the boys asked me what she was doing I remembered that while we were in Stanley they had played with shake flashlights. You know, the flashlights that don’t use batteries and instead you have to shake them. They totally bought it and I felt redeemed by my stroke of genius. It was a beautiful save. The only drawback—if you ask Henry and Wyatt what miming looks like they’ll show you how to shake a flashlight.

Obviously, the film is not authentic. In my defense, the motion picture is more than 112 years old. However, miming did not receive any recognition on film until the 1910s or the 1930s or the 1950s—all according to different Wikipedia pages.