Hello Elizabeth, no question is silly or stupid, we heard that all through out school, and the teachers were right, there are plenty of people that are asking themselves the same question yet don\'t have the guts to ask...many times people will do the one finger open hand motion because they are either talking to someone and don\'t want to break the conversation but at the same time don\'t want you to think they are ignoring you, other times is because they can not make any noise and this would be a way to say give me a minute can you please wait...there is much teachings on body language that can be learned in general and this is one of those. I have study much of this type of language that we use on a daily basis, there is also some great teachings for men and women to know each other as the body language of woman or the body language of men founded in sites like www.bodylanguageofmen.org i enjoy reading this type of articles because it opens our minds as we see on daily basis how people speak more with their body than with their mouth.