We live in an increasingly fast-paced - even frantic - world where the social niceties are disappearing daily. Good luck getting a "thank you" or a "have a nice day" from a fast-food worker. You're dreaming if you think you can call a business and get a real person who gives a real damn about your problems. It's a fantasy to expect anything more than a dirty look most days from most people. But when Americans no longer understand the rules, the subleties, the very nuances of how and when to give each other the finger, well, the country's going straight to hell.

Last week the Bunny and I took his little boy skiing for the day. Being in the family way myself, I decided to drop them off at the lodge to ski while I spent the day shussing through charming antique stores. We got there bright and early. It was a cold, icy morning. After waving 'bye to my guys I headed back down the mountain. It was a two-lane road, slick and narrow, with lots of curves. As I came around a bend I saw, to my panic, that there was another car driving toward me in my lane. This person was, of course, going the wrong direction and heading straight for me. I'm standing on the brakes at this point - and they're grinding and making those weird noises that anti-lock brakes make - and slip-sliding on the icy road. Now, I drive a great, big tank. It's a six year-old Land Rover that is 1) now paid for and 2) indestructible. My opponent on the mountain is piloting a pale blue Chevy Citation. Even at low speeds he's no match for me. We come within about a foot of colliding when he jerks his wheel and gets back into his own lane. At this very moment he unfurls his middle finger and mouths a suggestion to me along the lines of how I should perhaps go fornicate with myself. The nerve! The ignorance! I'll remind you: he was in MY lane. Mine! Had we actually gone through with our planned head-on collision my car would have destroyed the face that he was so busily sneering at me with. He was totally and completely in the wrong. And yet, he gave me the finger.

Giving the finger has traditionally been the right of the person who is wronged, in this case, in the traffic encounter. Driver A does something careless or stupid and is punished by Driver B who flips him off with a look of disdain as if to say, "Please, you moron, learn how to drive." This is a form of social correction, one that has worked beautifully for decades. Toss the rules aside and what do you get? Infuriated Americans with no means of expressing themselves. Road rage skyrockets as drivers like me are confronted with unearned flip-offs. How to respond? Spin a u-turn, race after the offender and rear-end him? Roll down your window and tell him what you know about his momma? Emulate Los Angelenos and pull a gun?

Escalating the violence is no answer. We must return to a simpler time, when the etiquette of giving the finger was understood, when we learned its power by watching our fathers wield its might on long family car trips. In the good old days I refer to, a righteous driver achieved more than satisfaction when he or she let that finger fly; the social order was preserved. Don't we all want to live in that America? A place where you knew when and how to go @*!% yourself and when and how to invite others to do so? Join me in rejecting the creeping anarchy of the modern highway! Know when to flip off and how! Learn to look sheepish when on the receiving end of a well-deserved finger. And most importantly, when you see me coming right at you on an icy mountain road, get the hell out of my lane.