In Germany, it’s against the law to flip someone the bird while driving.  If you extend your middle finger after being cut off by some twat on the autobahn, they can take down your tags and have the police come after you.

For the second time since we’ve been here, I’ve read about someone getting in trouble for allegedly shooting the bird while driving.  Given that photographs are often used by law enforcement, there could very well be proof of the insult.  On the other hand, there might not be.  I just think it’s funny that it’s such a big deal in a country where I can hear all sorts of dirty words on the radio in broad daylight.

Okay… so the words are in English, not German.  But still…

This reminds me of when I was sixteen, living in Virginia, and driving my dad’s crappy Chevy S-10 pickup truck.  I had about a dozen bales of hay in the back and couldn’t see for shit behind me.  A German woman had a daughter who rode horses at the same barn where I boarded my horse and took riding lessons– her husband was military.  She was trying to help me back up to the barn with the hay.  We weren’t very friendly to each other.  I found her unbearably anal retentive and I’m sure she thought I was disrespectful.  As a teenager, I was terminally bitchy anyway due to raging hormones and the self-centeredness and drama queen bullshit that permeates the teen years.  Anyway, I apparently called her a bitch while trying to maneuver the truck.

She got mad and yelled at me, even as I tried to apologize.  I honestly didn’t (and still don’t) remember calling her a bitch.  It’s entirely possible that I did, though maybe I didn’t.  I do have a filthy mouth and I didn’t like her very much.  But I don’t remember calling her a bitch.  I wonder if it pissed her off that she couldn’t go complain to the cops about the “insult”.

Edited to add in 2019…  The German woman and I later became much friendlier as I got older.  I even helped her daughter win some blue ribbons at horse shows.  😉  She was very involved with 4H, so we ended up working together on several projects.  And she’s probably forgotten all about this incident because deep down, she’s a reasonable person.

I notice that she’s made her permanent home in America, even though she and her husband divorced. It looks like she got remarried and is now a real estate agent.  She’s probably very good at the job.  If I saw her today, I’d be a lot nicer to her.  At the same time… jeez.  I’m all for being civil and courteous while driving, but don’t cops have better things to do than go after drivers who happen to give someone the bird while driving?