{"id":10780,"date":"2022-05-16T09:00:18","date_gmt":"2022-05-16T16:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/?p=10780"},"modified":"2022-05-13T09:36:41","modified_gmt":"2022-05-13T16:36:41","slug":"a-new-sign-of-the-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/?p=10780","title":{"rendered":"A New Sign of the Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Bob Sparrow<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

The age-old sign of insolent ill will<\/p><\/div>\n

No, not a remake of the Harry Styles <\/strong>hit, ‘Sign of the Times’,<\/strong> and, no, I\u2019m not going to pontificate on how times have changed, how we’ve become so polarized or why people don’t want to go to work anymore.\u00a0 This is much more important than all of that.\u00a0 As you regular readers know, and even those who aren\u2019t regular (Sorry, they have medication for that), I mostly like writing about travel, and struggle with blog topics when I\u2019m not preparing for a trip or on one.\u00a0 With Covid and unrest in various parts of the world, my travel has been a bit restricted.\u00a0 Oh yeah, I still work, so sometimes that gets in the way too.\u00a0 Given the environment we are currently in, I look to find travel stories wherever I can. This one takes place less than a mile from my home<\/strong> \u2013 so technically it\u2019s a ‘travel story’.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m driving my car and I do something that I don\u2019t normally do, something we’ve all done, but try to avoid; I cut off a person as I was making a turn<\/strong>.\u00a0 It was a two-lane, right turn and I was in the right-most lane and as I turned, I didn\u2019t see the car to my left, also making a right turn, and I drifted into his lane and cut him off.\u00a0 He saw me, honked, swerved and sped by me, as I\u2019m sure he was thinking he wanted to get as far away as possible from this idiot.<\/p>\n

As he drove by and gave me that \u2018Where\u2019d you get your license, K-Mart?\u2019<\/strong> look, I wanted to apologize and tell him that I was genuinely sorry; while I knew I couldn\u2019t speak to him, I wondered if there was some gesture I could make that would convey an apology.<\/p>\n

Several gestures came to mind:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. A wave and smile<\/strong> \u2013 It kind of says, \u201cHi, not sure who you are, thanks for letting me borrow your lane for a while.\u00a0 Have a nice day.\u00a0 I’m an idiot!”<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    2. Thumbs up<\/strong> \u2013 this sort of acknowledges that you understand what happen, but a thumbs up is a \u2018positive\u2019\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0gesture\u2019, so you\u2019re really saying, \u201cPretty cool that I cut you off, huh?\u00a0 I’m OK!\u201d<\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    3. Peace sign<\/strong> – This really says \u2018peace\u2019, don\u2019t kick my ass, \u2018you lived, I lived, it\u2019s all good, brother\u2019<\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

    4. Hang loose<\/strong> sign \u2013 this says, \u2018Don\u2019t sweat it man, this happens all the time, just relax and accept it – chill.\u2019<\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

    5. I even thought about saying I\u2019m sorry in sign language<\/strong>, which is a fist rubbing circularly on your chest over your\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 heart. Aside from the fact that he couldn\u2019t see that, the odds are he wouldn\u2019t have understood what it meant\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 anyway.<\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

    He sped away pissed off, and I continued on my journey, frustrated, a bit more cognizant of the boundaries of my lane, and wondering if there was a hand signal that says \u2018I\u2019m sorry\u2019.<\/strong><\/p>\n

    I Googled it.\u00a0 No such animal.\u00a0 So, I saw this as an opportunity to invent one.\u00a0\u00a0 It\u2019s got to be a hand gesture, something easy to do and visible to a passing car.\u00a0 It\u2019s got to be the opposite of the middle finger or the shaking fist.\u00a0 I\u2019ve got it!<\/strong> Open the hand up and spread the fingers.\u00a0 The open hand is the opposite of the fist and all five fingers is not the single middle finger.\u00a0 The five fingers could stand for five words, like:<\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/a>

    I’M SORRY!<\/strong><\/p><\/div>\n

    1. I’m the one to blame<\/p>\n

    2. Sorry I cut you off<\/p>\n

    3. My mistake, I’m so sorry<\/p>\n

    4. Thank you for being alert<\/p>\n

    5. Please accept my sincere apology<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    Now it will be up to you as one of our readers to get the word, or the hand, out.<\/strong>\u00a0 This could be a movement and you could say you were on the ground floor.<\/p>\n

    OK, I’m traveling this week, we’ll see if my travels are blog-worthy, although this one probably lowered the blog bar!<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    by Bob Sparrow No, not a remake of the Harry Styles hit, ‘Sign of the Times’, and, no, I\u2019m not going to pontificate on how times have changed, how we’ve become so polarized or why people don’t want to go … read more<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10792,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[813],"tags":[3816,3821,3820,3817,3822,3818,3819],"class_list":["post-10780","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-travel","tag-hang-loose","tag-harry-styles","tag-its-a-sign-of-the-times","tag-peace","tag-sign-language","tag-sorry","tag-thumbs-up"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/finger-1.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p31aN0-2NS","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10780","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10780"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10780\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10802,"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10780\/revisions\/10802"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10792"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10780"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10780"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10780"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}