road followed.
With time, some genius recognised the common denominators to this chain of events… way to stop a car: differs; car stops: same; question asked ("Where you headed?"): same; indicate direction: same… and decided that if he pointed in the direction of the road, the car would stop and the driver would not have to ask the Inevitable Question since he'd already know the answer. The next thing to do would be to get into the vehicle. So upon some hot afternoon, after the night of a blue moon, the genius hitchhiker stuck out his finger in the direction of the road and the genius driver that happened to be coming along recognised the genius hitchhikers method of calling attention to himself, and the brilliant way in which he already answered the Inevitable Question. So the genius driver stopped and the genius hitchhiker got in. And the two people stared at each other in sheer awe over the miracle in which they had just been instrumental.
I am sure that many a genius tear was shed on that memorable evening when one genius happed upon another on that lonely road. But anyways… word spread among the hitchhiking and lonely-road driving populations of their terrific discovery. And so the practice caught on like wildfire. All over the globe, hitchhikers stuck out their fingers in the direction of the road then smiled in wonderment as cars stopped for them.
Now at first, the finger used to point wasn't even a finger in its true sense (what's the true sense of a finger?) it was a thumb. This was purely for convenience, the thumb was the best finger to point in the direction of the road without using the extra energy needed to twist a wrist or stretch an arm. As the trend got more popular though, revolutionaries, and people who just wanted to be different, used all fingers imaginable. The only thing they kept in common was that they all pointed in the direction of the road or the direction in which the mobile was headed.

other revolution. People point in every which way! Some are religious pointers and point to Heaven, others point to Hell, the social people who didn't wear deodorant and are too ashamed to lift their arms, point across the road, some people point at the maxi-taxi (or mini-bus, depending on perspective) as it comes toward them, others still defeat the entire purpose of using one finger to save energy and use their whole palm saying 'halt' as it were. Another thing I've seen being done is a head nod. This does not constitute weariness; this is fully-fledged laziness. These people don't use their fingers; they just nod until a maxi-taxi stops for them. So if you're going down the road and you see someone saying yes until their eyes begin to hang out, they're just trying to stop a taxi that, even though it's not there, they're still seeing because they shook their heads so much.
Some people, more specifically, school children, that I noticed yesterday were trying a new scheme to stop minibuses (or maxi-taxis, depending

PREVIOUS PAGE