By Jim Hagarty
1995
I am not prone to delivering obscene gestures to my fellow human travellers on this planet, even though their increasingly aggravating ways in these lean and mean ’90s would, on any given day, provoke a saint into a fit of cussing. I do not normally “thumb” my nose at anyone, though I cannot lie, I have done it. That little indiscretion, when I’ve given into it, has on occasion been followed by an attempt by the recipient of my gesture to “fist” my nose in repayment. I have never given anyone the Mediterrean signal whereby the back of the fingers on one hand are placed under the chin and flipped forward quickly, an ultimate signal of contempt and disgust. Nor have I ever chopped the edge of my hand into the crook of my arm or jabbed a clenched fist quickly into the air. That one means business and I’ve just never felt that prepared to face the possible free-for-all that could develop out of its use.
So that leaves one little gesture – easy to perform and impossible to mistake – involving the middle finger extended upwards on its own while the other four are curled tightly to the hand. Not too classy, I’ll admit, but as effective as an exclamation mark at the end of a sentence. It says it all. And I think it was Pierre Trudeau who said it best, through the window of a train he was riding to some protesters along the way.
It says, “You stink, take a hike, leave me alone, you’re full of it, you’re a jerk.”
And even though the use of such a gesture might betray a obvious absence of charm-school training, if it’s good enough for a prime minister, perhaps I can be forgiven the occasional use of it myself.
The thing I have to learn, I can see now, is not so much whether to use it but when. The difference between a prime minister and a lowly journalist in a small Perth County city, it seems, is that when the former uses it, it can help him win his next election. The prize for me, when I use it, is somewhat smaller.
All that to tell you this:
One day recently, I was putt-putting along Highway 8 heading from Mitchell to Stratford, when some brave clown with a foot that weighs more than his brain pulled out to pass the line of cars heading my way. All of a sudden, an ugly two-ton, hunk of steel, plastic, rubber, glass and rust was hurtling my way like a puck off Brett Hull’s stick, heading for Patrick Roy’s head. To say the least, this was distressing.
Cowboy Bob there, or whatever his name was, managed to squeak back into line before shearing my little car off at the oil pan, and such was my feeling of relief and anger that my left hand automatically came off my steering wheel and formed itself into the famous exclamation mark so that he could see just how madly I was falling in love with him.
Now here’s where a good plan often goes bad. My timing initiating my gesture was perfect and I have a good feeling the daredevil in my midst caught my drift. However, like a performer who doesn’t know when to get off the stage, I held onto my punctuation a little too long. The car directly behind the one to which I had been sending my love, bore a striking similarity to the one driven by a very close relative and the person behind the wheel looked remarkably like the person I bump into at every family gathering. As our cars met, I know I was still in full salute.
This produced a tense hour or two while I imagined my family member reviewing every detail of our past relationship to search for reasons why I’d have delivered such a negative greeting. A phone call eventually established that it was someone else’s relative who was reviewing our past relationship and that was a great relief. But it was too close a call.
So I am back to muttering under my breath and giving the cat mean stares when I get home to ease the stress of modern life. I will leave the hand gestures to prime ministers who have bodyguards to deflect hostile reactions and public-relations departments to smooth the ruffled feathers.
