Ms. Betty's experience with sign language

Sallie Satterthwaitea has been a resident of Fayette Co. since 1971. She is involved in politics and the development of the community, and now a semi-retired housewife and grandma.

By SALLIE SATTERTHWAITE
sallies@juno.com

In a recent column, I was looking for a safe and effective way to promote communication between drivers who have inadvertently committed some driving faux pas like cutting each other off.

I had done exactly that, and knew I was in the wrong, but had no graceful way to respond to the other driver’s Middle Digit Salute. We need a gesture that says, “Sorry - my fault,” or just, “Whoops.”

Someone suggested that American Sign Language, with its rich vocabulary for hands, fingers, and body, has something to offer. The sign for “I love you” might be a start.

You know it, the index finger and the pinkie extended upward, two middle fingers folded down, the thumb forming an “L” with the index finger. Triumphant athletes send it to loved ones in the stands and it has essentially replaces “Hi, Mom” from people who find themselves in range of a TV camera.

I ruled out, however, signals involving the fingers for fear of misinterpretation. I have a hunch there are more people out there who know what an extended middle finger means than those who know ASL for “I love you.”

A phone call the afternoon that column appeared confirmed my suspicion.

The caller was Betty DeJesus, a now-retired nurse I’ve known and respected for more years than either of us might want to admit.

“Sallie,” she said in her soft, Boston-flavored voice. “I read your column today, and I just had to tell you what happened to me.”

Betty’s hearing has been failing as long as I’ve known her and she has reached the point where she needs a hearing aid. She was driving her little red car to her audiologist, and had her youngest granddaughter Danielle, 17, her “special” grandchild for the way she works to overcome her disabilities.

Danielle is particularly proud that she’s learning sign language, and has been trying to teach it to her grandmother for the day her hearing aid will no longer do the job.

They were working on the sign for “I love you,” when they had to stop for a traffic light, Betty tried to form the sign herself, not easy with fingers stiffened by arthritis.

When she finally succeeded, I suspect she may have held up her hand to admire what she’d done. Suddenly she became aware of the car that had pulled up next to hers to wait for the light. The driver was glaring at her, and when the light changed, he shot her a bird and scratched off.

Betty’s reaction? She was mortified. There’s no way in the world Betty - soft-spoken, genteel, gray-haired Betty - would have stooped to anything so common, and she was embarrassed to think anyone else could imagine she would.

She arrived at the clinic where her doctor works, and as she was signing in, realized that the staff was convulsing with laughter. The receptionist explained to her what was going on:

Dr. “Jones”(who is not Betty’s audiologist) had just come to work and was in a rage. When his staff asked what was wrong, he snarled that he had pulled up to wait for a light, when, for no reason at all, a little gray-haired grandmother in a red car shot him a bird.

Whatever sign we decide on as an apology, we’ll have to publicize it well so everyone knows what it means. A New York Times columnist, John Tierney, published a piece headlined “Inventing a Hand Signal to Offset the Classic Gesture of Road Rage.”

At present, he says, there is only one universally understood “classic gesture.” (Elsewhere I read that that gesture is thought to date back to ancient Roman times and is a symbol of dominance that must be learned, and yes, it does represent the portion of male anatomy you think it does.)

Tierney noted in his March 1999 article that “civility is coming back into fashion.” I hadn’t noticed, truthfully, but he does hold that a new signal is needed and NYC’s Department of Transportation researchers are working on it.

The first suggestion most people make is two fingers raised in a V, the old ’60s peace sign. Or the even older V for Victory. Too political, or too risky if people see only one finger, NYCDOT concluded, and ruled it ineffective.

Samuel Schwartz, a DOT consultant who enjoys a certain immortality for inventing the term “gridlock,” has had better luck with a gesture of apology: a light tap of the palm to the forehead. It says, “How thoughtless of me! I’m sorry!”

Could the Forehead Tap become a standard gesture of appeasement? Maybe, but anthropologist David Givens, director of the Center for Nonverbal Studies in Spokane, Wash., and author of the first dictionary of body language, cautions that “it can be ambiguous.” It may show you’re angry with yourself, but “in some Mediterranean regions, it means ‘I’m crazy’ or ‘A curse on you!’” Givens says.

So he has concocted a new signal, the Bowing Thumb Waggle, which already has subliminal meanings of submission, meekness, or friendliness. “Display the open palm and wave gently, with fingers spread slightly apart and the thumb folded across the palm. The overall gesture says, ‘I mean you no harm,’ and cannot be confused with any other cultural cue anywhere, not even in the Middle East,” says Givens.

Dolly Morgan, Peachtree City’s octogenarian tennis player, called to say that a similar sign apologizes for a bad shot on the courts - hand raised, palm out - as a multi-use sign for regret and peace.

Now that could be a godsend on the highway too.

We still need “Thank you,” however, for when it works.