M'goodness, it's been over a month since my last post! I've been uninspired, maybe, or nose-grindstone-en.
Here's a fun one you may not know. While the etiquette is being lost (as is etiquette in all facets of society), many a big rig driver will greet a peer on the road in a relaxed nod and an easy wave sort of way. We head bob and do a 'say hey' sort of deal.
My favorite is a reverse-three-finger wag. I swing up my left arm, nonchalant-like, my palm facing inward, and raise my thumb, index and middle fingers. The other two remain loosely curled. Accompanied with an easy 'wha'sup' nod.
I'm also fond of the guys who do the 'wagons-ho!' wave. They begin their swing at the shoulder, fingers starting in the curled position, then straighten as the wave arm thrusts forward towards the windshield. Or horizon. Ho-ohhhhh! John Wayne, you flutter things in me that oughtn't-a flutter.
No finger wagglers to-date. Drivers are too cool for finger waggling. No frenetically-friendly wavers either. That would just be pushy. No, it's always a relaxed, coooool sort of greeting, an acknowledgment that we're peers. We're a club. We're different from the road-remoras who flit and flow around us.
Can you imagine sending even a nod-eyebrow-lift greeting to the soccer moms and tie-wearers on the road with you? Sending even the most brief of messages that says, "I know you. You're one of my kind," to them? Hah! Get ready for soccer mom to send you a single-finger message of her own. (That's right, I am number one! ... or so I tell my bird-flipping friends.)
The art of the brief-greet across highway lanes is dying I'm told. Still, retro-grrrrl that I am, I'm working on my say-hey and head bob, in hopes of a trucker-etiquette renaissance.
