POSTING #68

Gestures---Some Rude, Some Not---from Around the World


Watching a recent video clip of Rahm Emanuel---President Obama's Chief of Staff---playfully thumbing his nose at someone reminded me of recess when I was attending the Arthur Public School.

Thumbing one's nose---what the Urban Dictionary defines as, " A sign of derision made by putting your thumb on your nose and wiggling your fingers."---was very common on the playground.

At least when the teachers weren't looking.

Thumbing one's nose wasn't an angry gesture, like putting up your dukes, or saying "I'll get you after four."

Yes, it was naughty and a 'put down' but it wasn't at all vicious.


000

Another gesture that was used a lot in Arthur was to point an index finger at a boy and girl who happened to be talking and then rub it with the other index finger, the point being to embarrass them by suggesting that there was something romantic going on.

I wonder about the origin of that gesture and how widespread it was, and whether it is still being used on playgrounds today.

Perhaps one of our younger readers can help me.

000

In Russia there were many gestures, two of which made a major impact on me.

One was the shoulder shrug that signified, "Who knows".

The mid-1990s was a time of considerable chaos in Russia and a shrug was the appropriate answer to questions such as: when will the fax machine be fixed?, when will the computers arrive?, when will the train leave?, when will the cable installer come?, and on and on.

When I came home for leave after a several-month stint in Russia, Pat claims that I responded to her questions with the Russian shrug. She found this very annoying, especially from one who had been a bit of a 'know-it-all.

It would take Pat a week or so to re-Canadianize me.

The other Russian gesture came from the woman who was my liaison with the Russian employment service. She was a remarkable woman, an engineer, intelligent, hard-working, and dedicated. Much of whatever success we had with our project in Russia was due to her.

She was also strong-willed.

From time to time, we would have lively discussions about how the project should be run. The usual point of contention was about how much a team of Canadian consultants could reasonably be expected to accomplish during their 6 week stay in Russia.

After one particularly acrimonious debate, the woman threw up her hands as though I were the most uncooperative person on earth and marched to the door. She paused in the doorway, and turning her head so she could watch my reaction, she scuffed her shoes as though she were scraping something unpleasant off the soles---perhaps dog dirt.

Slamming the door, she took off.

In a day or two, after tempers had cooled, we reached an accommodation.

I thought of her when I read a study a few years ago about the conditions that lead to successful foreign aid projects. One of the key factors identified in the study was the presence of a dedicated, hard working liaison person from the host country.

I was lucky in my consulting career to almost always have a strong liaison person.

My Russian shoe-scuffing friend was one of the best!

000

We are all familiar with another gesture---the middle-finger salute, which indicates, let's say, a strong sense of outrage.

I ran into a similar but even more potent gesture in Amman, Jordan.

Coming back to my hotel from a day at the Jordanian office, in the heavy evening traffic, my driver was cut off by someone. The usually mild-minded driver became upset and as we pulled alongside the other car, he leaned out the window and made a gesture that I hadn't seen before.

The other driver shouted and waved his arms in anger. My driver settled back in his seat, pleased at the reaction he had obtained from the other driver.

I asked him what the gesture meant.

He shook his head, said he couldn't tell me.

I persisted and he finally said, "I am sorry Mr. John, I shouldn't have done that. It was bad."

He turned back to the road, as though the issue were closed.

Ever eager to learn more about the local culture, I insisted he tell me.

At last, he showed me the gesture, a rather intricate arrangement of the fingers of one hand.

After considerable prompting, he finally told me that the gesture meant that the other person had an unusually small manhood (sorry for the circumlocution, but this IS a family blog).

And worse, the gesture suggested that the manhood was limp.

I could see why the other driver was upset.

Now, you may have noticed that I haven't described the gesture.

There is a reason.

A few years later, we were having a discussion with a guest in our Windows-on-the-Lake bed and breakfast in Grimsby when the issue of road rage came up. The guest, a woman from Toronto, was telling about her encounters with rude, aggressive drivers.

I told the story about the Amman gesture. She was very interested, and insisted that I demonstrate the gesture several times. She practised it, asking whether she had got it just right.

She had.

After breakfast, she told us she was going to St. Catharines to do some shopping.

The next morning at breakfast, she had hardly sat down before she started to tell us about an adventure she had had in St. Catharines.

A taxi driver cut her off. Seeing that his complexion suggested that he could be from the Middle East, she gave him THE gesture.

I was horrified. It is one thing to have another man make that gesture, but a woman!

"What did he do?", I asked.

"Oh, it was most satisfactory,", she purred.

Apparently, the taxi driver, stared at her with disbelief, and then started to shout and bang the steering wheel.

She said that it made her feel much better and she intended to use the gesture in Toronto.

I pleaded with her not to use the gesture any more---that a driver might be so outraged he would ram her car.

She just smiled.

I keep waiting to hear that a woman driver in Toronto has been arrested for causing a public disturbance by making an obscene gesture at a taxi driver.

So, you can see why I am not going to describe the gesture.

At a time when President Obama is trying to restrict the distribution of nuclear products, I think I have an obligation to limit the spread of nuclear gestures.

I hope you understand.


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See you next Sunday for Posting #69 with more stories from our family’s universe! If you have comments or suggestions, please leave a comment at the bottom of this posting, or email me at johnpathunter@cs.com.