Middle Finger = American Joke

Random old dude at a Christmas party I went to. Seriously, I hope I'm bat shit crazy when I'm his age too.

From the corridors of Junior High in Japan. Are you supposed to capitalize Junior High? Maybe only if it's a proper noun. I don't realy know.

New antics from the class which brought you ja-ge. Of course, using ja-ge in the place of every verb, in turn making every sentence about sex still makes a daily appearance. These kids aren't forgetting that little gem anytime soon. But the new one is entirely non-verbal.

Another kid, let's call him Sir Pouty (because he always looks a little angry) turns to me, teacher in full view, and says, "Mr. Brian, look!" He then turns just enough to the side so that the head teacher (the one who could actually do some sort of punishment) can't see his hands, and flips me the middle finger. The best part is he still has his angry face on. But it's sort of a smily angry face. Then, once the head teacher tries to see whats going on, the finger goes down, and a simple explanation is presented.

"Don't worry. American joke."

Later in the day (3 minutes later) the American joke is shown again. There's no punchline to this joke, just a big fat bird for yours truly.

But the thing is, it's kind of funny to me, an American, so I guess in some sense it really is an American joke. Maybe if it was the reverse peace sign, fingers together, it would be a British joke. I'm not going to analyze it much more.