Digitus Impudicus at WYPR

 A man flipped me the bird this week!

 He did it in a place where one might least expect it. This was not an expression of road rage on a busy roadway; it was at the studio of Baltimore’s local public radio station, WYPR where I was participating in a discussion of conditions in Uganda and the astounding impact of the viral video “Kony 2012.” I was in the sealed interview booth. He was outside, on the other side of the large window looking into the booth. The gesture astonished me so much that I lost track of the first question posed to me by the host, Dan Rodricks.

At first I wondered why on earth this fellow, who actually is employed by WYPR, would give me the finger. Then I recalled that more than 20 years ago he was an employee of The Baltimore Sun when I was an editor at the paper. He had an exclusively-held high opinion of himself but management was unimpressed. They tried to fire him. The union representing reporters successfully intervened on his behalf, but eventually he left. I will not name him here because apart from his notoriously long-held grudges, he also is notoriously litigious.

 But never mind all that. The incident reminded me that the finger gesture appears to have lost the popular place it once held in the realm of silent anger expression. I have not used it in years and this is not because I have not been sufficiently enraged. It’s more because the gesture can get you a punch in the nose.

My favorite story about a confrontation in which I did use it takes me back to Jerusalem in the 1980s when I was The Sun’s Middle East correspondent. I was driving on the road near the Damascus Gate, the main entrance to the Old City, and an Israeli driver cut me off. I caught up with him at a traffic light and gave him the finger. He caught up with me at the next traffic light. I expected the worst. He rolled down his window and gave me a different hand gesture: A fist thrust forward with the index and small finger pointed forward. “No,” he said. “In this country, we do it like this.” And away he drove, clearly delighted to have had the last word.

The finger gesture is one of the world’s oldest. 2000 years before my Jerusalem experience, the city was occupied by Romans who called it digitus impudicus. Before them, the ancient Greeks called it katapugon, with certain, uh, back door implications.

It is a marvelous gesture with a rich history. I think I shall try to use it more often, preferably from behind the safety of a thick window with plenty of time to get away from the consequences.