Whatever happened to the courtesy wave? The one where you let someone cut you in traffic and they show their gratitude of your kind gesture with a wave of the hand. Now everyone on the road feels entitled, as if you owe them the spot between you and the vehicle in front of you. The space that’s just a tad too small for their over-sized SUV, a vehicle designed to hold the Octomom family and still have space for King Kong, Godzilla and Mothra to have an orgy in the backseat.
Place yourself in this scenario, it should be one that you’re quite familiar with: Traffic is crawling on the highway. A swarm of baby tortoises pass you on the right. The monstrosity of metal, plastic, glass and rubber to your left signals with their right blinker, indicating that they desire the piece of asphalt ahead of your car. Kindly, you back off and let them merge into your record-setting line of smog-birthing, fossil-fuel-ingesting steel boxes on wheels. You feel a sense of warmth inside for your chivalrous generosity and selflessness. Surely the operator of the vehicle must think you are a fine specimen of modern humanity. They must be fighting an internal battle to keep themselves from not stepping from their vehicle to approach you with a hug.
You wait, patiently, for their sign of recognition of your good deed. Your eyes darting and searching through the back glass of their rear window, then along the drivers side door, eagerly anticipating the international gesture of thanks – the courtesy wave. But you get nothing. Nothing but disappointment. Nothing but shot down. You sputter and spit and mutter obscenities under your breath.
“You’re welcome, asshole!” you shout from behind the wheel of your car, hoping beyond hope that they hear you.
This guy can’t be serious, you think. He doesn’t own the road. That’s not his piece of pavement that you so kindly sacrificed for his polar-bear-killing heap of metal. Yet he behaves as if he’s entitled to all parts of the road, as if this favor you so gloriously delivered into his life was actually a debt that you owed to him. His bold display of entitlement is like throwing gasoline on your fire. Rage begins growing deep inside your gut, bubbling and boiling to the depths of your soul. Sweat beads up on your forehead. Now YOU feel entitled and deserved of recognition from the driver ahead of you.
“It’s too hard to wave, I guess” you mumble. And then, in all of your glory, you throw him a hand gesture of your own: the middle finger, with the thumb sticking out to throw an exclamation point on the end of that “fuck you!”
