5-year-old girl's unintended rude gesture during school play goes viral: 'It's just a shame'

A little girl who dressed as an angel for her school's Christmas play showed her mother she might be a bit more of a devil when she unintentionally flipped off the audience for 20 whole minutes.

Carla Bovingdon, a mother from Essex, U.K., shared photos of her 5-year-old daughter, Ella, on Facebook earlier this month after her darling girl stole the show at her school's nativity play.

The pictures show Ella decked out in a white angel costume, topped with a silver tinsel halo, holding both of her middle fingers up to the crowd.

The reason behind the rude gesture? Apparently, Ella had pulled a hangnail and wanted to let her mother know about her injury.

"Bless mason and Ella in their school play, it’s just a shame Ella spent the whole time trying to show me she’d hurt her middle finger," Bovingdon wrote on Facebook.

The mortified mom said her daughter initially raised just one of her middle fingers but eventually cranked the other up as well, in order to compare her hurt finger to her non-injured one. She kept up the salute for about 20 minutes of the half-hour performance.

"It was pretty much for the majority of it, she was there with her middle finger up," Bovingdon explained, according to the Independent. "Because I didn't run over there she kept holding it up as if she was saying, 'Mum, look!'"

Naturally, the move was a huge hit with the crowd.

“A couple of the teaching assistants had a bit of a giggle," Bovingdon recalled. “I was thinking, 'Oh god, Ella please stop.' Because she was doing it so innocently, I think most people were thinking, 'Oh bless her.'"

"That’s what made it so funny as well, because she was completely oblivious," she added.

Last week, Ella’s mother shared photos of her daughter decked out for the holidays once again — this time, as a little elf...with no middle fingers in sight.