Dear Mr. Finger,
Well, that was a first.
We were both on a congested road and you were in your car hoping to merge into my lane. I let you in. Then, as you drove in front of me, you extended a hand and raised your middle finger and balled the others into a tight fist. My mind was blown. The next few moments were spent asking, “Did that really happen?” Did you really just show me, as the Cambridge Dictionary defines it, “in an offensive way that you are angry with that person (me) by turning the back of your hand toward them (me again) and putting your middle finger up?” I did you a favour.
Drivers, cyclists and pedestrians have screamed at me, cursed me and made various rude gestures, but they did so because they felt I had wronged them. For instance, a driver might be cross because I did not let him merge and decide to give me the finger. There is a logic (albeit a rude one) present.
But you – Mr. Finger – gave me the finger for doing something that an impartial observer would describe as kind (or at least civil).
Does your vile gesture herald a new era in road rage? Has it become so bad that drivers are going to begin flipping one another off for being polite? Is the anger so pent up that any excuse will do? Oedipus didn’t kill his father Laius because Laius let him merge his chariot. He killed Laius because Laius ordered Oedipus to move off the road. When Oedipus refused, Laius tried to run him over with his chariot. Then Oedipus killed his father in the first recorded road rage incident.
Whatever happened to the grateful wave?
We may be due for a road-rage devolution. It’s been 35 years since the concept originated in Los Angeles. In June 1987, Sandra Tait was driving with her boyfriend Rick Bynum and his three-year-old son. Bynum was fatally shot by a tailgating driver who, The Los Angeles Times reported, “apparently was angry because Tait would not get out of the fast lane and allow him to pass.” The killer was never caught. More killings followed and hysteria developed around what ABC called “an epidemic of freeway violence.” In 1988, a driver in Tampa claimed in court that it was a fit of “road rage” that caused him to shoot and wound someone who cut him off.
Today’s highways and streets are rife with road rage. Like an invasive species, it has mutated and now comes in a plethora of varieties. Some are everyday manifestations, such as the Calgary driver that Global News reported was charged “after police received reports of a road-rage incident [in early October] in which a driver reportedly drove erratically, exited his vehicle and flashed a handgun.” Then there are the two fathers accused of shooting each other’s daughters in a road-rage incident. They engaged in a “cat and mouse game” that ended in gunfire. Nassau County Sheriff Bill Leeper summed up the road rage succinctly, “There could’ve been two dead kids cause of two stupid grown men.”
Which brings us back to the “Case of the Merge and the Middle Finger.” No one was shot. No one was punched. No car mirrors were knocked off. No one even yelled. On the road-rage scale, it was mild. But it was bizarre.
Perhaps you were caught off guard. Perhaps you were expecting me to cut you off and were preparing to signal your discontent and were caught “mid-finger.” At this point the offending digit was half unfurled and it was impossible to roll it back. So, you committed to the aggressive gesticulation and went about your day.
Perhaps I have a finger-worthy face?
I’m not sure what you were hoping to achieve. It may be that you wished to dampen my brotherly spirit. Mr. Finger, allow me to assure you that you have not. I will continue to be courteous and kind on the road. I will not let one misplaced digit alter my rosy view of the world.
And who knows, we often meet with those whom we expect never to see again. Perhaps we will meet on another street with a different outcome. We can change the narrative. Imagine if Oedipus, instead of killing his father, just flipped him the bird? It would have changed the story entirely.
Until then, let’s hope you weren’t starting a trend.