Range of waves and all that Jazz

Do you wave at people driving the same car as you? Over the years, I’ve owned so many old dungers that I thought waving at all and sundry was normal. It wasn’t until I made the mistake of owning a Subaru Legacy that I learned that people in the same car don’t always wave.

I also realised how many of them are clogging up our roads.

This waving business may come as news to the normies among you so here’s how it works: if you’re driving an old car and you’re driving towards someone in a similar old vehicle, you wave at one another.

Once you climb on board a motorbike it’s even more obvious. On a bike, you’re part of a dying breed and acknowledgement doesn’t even require the bike to be old.

Bikers, on the whole, give other bikers a wee wave as they pass.

‘‘Hello. We’re in the same gang.’’

There are exceptions to the rule. For example, Harley owners choose not to participate in the camaraderie of the wave.

For whatever reason, they completely ignore me as I ride by waving.

I’m not sure if they wave at one another – I’ve never ridden distance on a hog – but I imagine the most they do is that staunch-as chin raise.

It’s easy to be tough-as when you’re getting about wearing chaps and tassels.

An old boy told me that back in the day there were so few people on the roads that everyone waved.

You can still see echoes of this ancient practice in the way rural folks acknowledge one another on lonely dirt roads.

Now I have a friend who claims that he invented the rural wave – where just the index finger is lazily lifted from the steering wheel – but I’ve never been able to fact-check this.

Maybe a helpful reader can confirm or deny whether this was, in fact, invented by my old mate Chookie.

My wife drives a Honda Jazz. Long-time readers will know that this goes against my recommendation that people should shut the hell up and buy the lowest mileage Corolla available.

But we live in a society where my wife is more than a chattel and doesn’t jump to my every command.

She’s a free-thinking, independent woman and she wanted a Jazz. Who can blame her, she’s a huge Ella Fitzgerald fan.

I’ve learned that if you really drive the pants off the Jazz, take it right up to the red line and sling it into corners, that it’s a really good-performing car.

In fact, for all the money I spent over the years making Cortinas and Husscourts go faster, I think the Jazz would beat the lot of them.

But Jazz owners have no sense of community. You’d think Jazz owners would have a feeling of belonging to a tribe. It was, after all, Japanese Car of the Year in 2007. Jazzys (as we could call ourselves) should all get around listening to Charles Mingus and Thelonius Monk, wearing turtlenecks and smoking cigarillos.

Here’s my proposal to the Jazz Club: when approaching another Jazz, proceed to perform Jazz hands. This serves as both a wave and a secret sign that you belong to the gang.

No other vehicle has its own specific wave and it will help to ensure that with time the Jazz will become the treasured vintage car that it will surely be recognised as in time.

This will help build a community and ensure that I don’t have to seek validation by desperately waving at Harley-Davidson owners in the sad hope that my friendship attempts will be reciprocated.