Montgomery, 1981

   My visit to the United States during the period of 1981/1982 to attend the USAF Air War College (AWC) — the highest level of professional military education within the United States Air Force — was sponsored by the United States government under the US International Military Education and Training (IMET) program. This time I was accompanied by my own family (of course, under my own travel expense) and we had to live off-base in an apartment in Montgomery, the capital city of the State of Alabama.

   One day I was driving my car off the city of Montgomery after picking up my youngest daughter who stayed overnight at her schoolmate's house. They seemed to have become good friends while being students at Floyd Junior High, a public school in Montgomery. Inside of my car were then my wife and my two daughters beside myself.

   While on the way back home along a country road where the road was quite narrow, another car was seen in my side mirror to be following us close from behind. But after a while the driver of the car seemed to lose his patience when he started to honk his horn again and again trying to pass my car. When
I found some clearing where the road widened a bit, I finally let him pass.

   When the car was already ahead of us, my wife seemingly saw the driver to have raised one of his hands up high and to her impression as if was saying "thanks" or "bye-bye" to us.... But when I noticed more clearly to what the guy actually did, my only response was to mumble myself, "Oh, shit!"

   Why? Because that guy not only raised his hand that simply, but his mid-finger was actually sticking up high! A certain type of culture in the United States that was then unfamiliar to my wife yet....

*****

   Another case was when I was driving downtown Montgomery one quiet noon. Upon approaching an intersection and the traffic lights had just turned yellow, I started reducing my speed too fast to get on time to make a right turn.

   But alas! I apparently forgot to turn on my turning signals in time while behind me was another car following me so close enough that the driver perhaps didn't expect I intended to make a right turn. His brakes screeched behind me and in a moment or so the car was already very close to the left side of my car. The driver was looking at me in astonishment and I was then startled upon knowing that he was a police officer in a police car, except that his car hadn't got its blue lamp blinking.

   So I waited for his reaction impatiently....

   It seemed to me that he finally realized I was a foreigner and not an American citizen, so without saying anything he only pointed out his forefinger in front of his face while swaying it for sometime, probably trying to warn me out:

   "Don't ever try to do it again!"

   I nodded at him respectfully, then he immediately left me while I still blushed in shame....

   How lucky was I, I thought, that not his 'sticked up midfinger' that he had used against me... ha haa....