Plane touched down on the runway. The day of my arrival in Seoul, South Korea at age eleven saw me being greeted by a Korean seafood truck driver giving me the middle fingers.

     This happened for no good reason. I let out a sigh and thought to myself that he must not like Americans too much and questioned how the color of my skin could have offended him. So there I was, just staring out of the bus window in a foreign world with my forehead pressed to the glass, watching this Korean gentleman twice my age double fist pump middle fingers at me while the bus was stopped in traffic. I couldn't respond. My parents would have seen me into a month of exhile. So I let it happen. This was my first memory of my day one in Seoul, South Korea. Cute.

     People tend to be what they were settled into being from early on in life. It's their environment that shapes them so it's important that we take these things into account before we make foolhardy decisions. Maybe this Korean truck driver grew up with a father that spoke poorly of people living in the United States, which in turn forced this man to have eventually grown a thick skin of dismay over the years. Whatever it was, the likeness of my blonde hair and unsuspecting face offended him enough to let me know that I had no chance of being invited over to his house for dinner.

     As I think back on this interesting and eye opening time of my life, I wonder about hand gestures. Gestures much like I so merrily received on my first day in South Korea. So I did a little bit of research and then started to wonder if I had ever been guilty of any of these cultural hand gesture misunderstandings...

     A thumbs up in some Arabic countries is what you would gesture when you are telling someone where to “put” their two cents. So then I thought about how I enjoy Middle Eastern cuisine and how I have dined at a handful of restaurants that serve this kind of food. Did a waitress ever come around and ask me how my meal was? Was my mouth ever full when she asked? Because usually, when that happens, I give a thumbs up to say, “Yeah, it's good, thanks.” I could be guilty of telling her to shove it.

     Also, in the Philippines, apparently using your arm to signal somebody to come here is actually a way to say that a creeping death is on it's way to take you. And in Africa and some other parts of Asia, we should all avoid handing an individual anything with our left hand because this indicates low regard and lack of respect. In these countries, the left hand is used for self sanitary upkeep. Tourists need not greet and shake hands with their left hand.

     On a more close to home scale, I remember spinning my fingers in a circle when I was a kid, making a visual communication to my friend that I was feeling woozy. My grandmother, sitting in the living room caught a glimpse of me doing so and took it as her own:

“You're saying that your old Grandma is crazy!” She called out, as a frown turned into actually weeping.

“No, no, Grammy. I said that I'm feeling dizzy. I was just making a hand gesture to Billy because I'm dizzy. Really, that's not what I meant!”

“Ohhh, I know what that means, you can't pull one over on me. I've been around long enough to know better. You're very disrespectful to your Grandma.” She sobbed.

“Not, but really....It's not...Grammy!”

“I know what you were trying to say. I'm not stupid!”

     So be aware. The next time that you find yourself in a hostile situation in traffic when the car horns are honking and your blood pressure is rising and you want to give someone a piece of your mind via your hands, think about me. Think about how I never forgot about Korean seafood truck driver. Think about how I'm half-crazed enough to write a chapter about it twenty years later. Think about how the lord God wants me to tell you to not be Korean seafood truck driver.