The finger is alive and well in St. Albert. And that is not a good thing.
There are debates about where and when the “one-finger salute” exactly originated, but there is no dispute that in modern culture the finger is the lowest form of insult and, unfortunately, also the easiest to dispense.
Drive down St. Albert Trail on any given Saturday — or probably during any busy period — and the finger may appear more often than the traffic-killing red lights.
Some drivers will simply flip it through a window, while others roll down the window and flip the finger for all to see … probably for added impact. The thing is, the finger is being flipped for the wrong reasons.
There’s a good chance you’ll get the finger if you dare to actually drive the speed limit, or slow down to let someone merge in front of you, or wait an extra five seconds to let a pedestrian cross the road, or not drive quick enough through the yellow light so the tail-gating truck behind you can run the red.
It’s not even safe to sing along to the song playing in your car because that driver beside or in front could see your moving lips and mistake your singing for swearing at her or him. And yes, women are as guilty of flipping the finger as the men.
One wonders if the frequent appearance of the finger is indicative of a general feeling in St. Albert. Are we becoming so frustrated with life’s problems, like continual traffic construction and delays, annual tax increases, constant high prices of gas and now the looming cost of Christmas, that we’ve forgotten how to be polite?
And it’s not just drivers.
In today’s letters to the editor is one from a St. Albert woman detailing her encounter with another resident recently while she was showing a visitor some of the fine homes in the city. She was accused of scaring the man’s young children, of being drunk and was told, rudely, to get out of the area before the police were called. To top it off, as the man and his children were leaving, one of the youngsters turned around and yelled, “Yeah, get out of here.”
Now we can understand a resident being concerned about a slow-moving vehicle at 9 p.m. on a Friday. But once informed the lady lived just down the street, there shouldn’t be any reason to be rude. Take down the licence plate number — and this man did — and let it go.
“I have so much sadness and anger at what happened, the only relief will be to let the residents of St. Albert know what kind of discrimination that occurs,” the lady wrote in her cover letter to the Gazette. “I am an average, working single mom of three … I was raised here all my life, my kids attend my former schools and life here is not as I remember. This place is cultivating a bunch of snobs and I will not be judged because my friends don’t fit the St. Albert profile.”
Being called snobs is not new to St. Albertans, of course. Now we’re teaching our children to be the same way? Makes one wonder if maybe we deserve the snob reputation.
