The Source of all Rudeness in America Today

The source of all rudeness today

The sun was setting as I accidentally cut off someone while driving this evening. It wasn’t my fault. I didn’t see the car. I was watching the dashboard television to see if the government would send me more stimulus money so I could beat this nasty economy.

Anyway, after the guy got out of his overturned car in the ditch, he said something very nasty and made an obscene gesture which set me to wondering: Where does all this rudeness come from? As an amateur historian, I decided to investigate and here’s what I found:

It all goes back to the British, the French and the battle of Agincourt in 1415. Back then the British were already tired of fighting with the Irish and decided to try their luck with the French. They put together an army and began an invasion of the continent.

As luck would have it, the tunnel across the Channel was shut down for repairs that week. The army was forced to make the dangerous crossing in wooden ships. It was dangerous because anti-smoking laws hadn’t yet been passed and many ships caught fire from careless disposal of cigarettes. When the English finally landed, their forces had been greatly reduced and they faced a numerically superior French army. There were so many of them, sort of like Young Democrats at an Obama rally.

The opposing army was mainly French Knights. They were called “Knights” because they worked full time jobs at night and fought battles the next day. Needless to say they were tired and pumped themselves up by chanting martial slogans like “Sacrebleu!” “Vive De Gaulle!” and “ La Vache Qui Rit!” To this very day one can still read these slogans on boxes of French cheese.
Dawn of that day in 1415, saw vast numbers of French Knights thundering toward the English positions. But unknown to the unfortunate French, the British held the nuclear weapon of their day: the English Long Bow.

What’s that you say? It was called the Long Bow because it was - well, long? No smarty pants. I’m the history expert here, okay.
The English Longbow was designed by Johnny Long (who went on to become a porn star) and Sally Bow, whose strangely-shaped legs reflected her name. The Longbow was made of sturdy English Yew, a wood legendary for its strength and resiliency. The Long Bow could hurl a sparrow with devastating force over two hundred yards.

What? Are you interrupting again? No, I didn’t make a mistake. I correctly stated sparrow, not arrow. British archers would trap thousands of sparrows in the English countryside. Then they’d stretch and flash-freeze them. Because of the feathers they would go much faster than arrows and the beaks were tough enough to penetrate armor or the roof of a Mini-Cooper.

(Historical note: Back in those days the French used Mini-Coopers like tanks. Ironically enough they obtained them from the British by trading berets, Piaf records, and naked photos of Brigitte Bardot.)

As the hordes - (normally “hordes” is reserved for Mongolians. We are allowing it’s use here as a tribute to French gallantry.) of French Knights approached the gray-coated British lines,
(redcoats wouldn’t appear for a couple of centuries until the advent of color-fast fabrics) they were decimated by swarms of deadly sparrows from the longbows. Many were killed. The survivors jumped in the Mini-Coopers and joined the farm subsidy protests instead. It was much safer.

The French were thoroughly routed. Historians will note that the battle of Agincourt marked the beginning of the period of French Unhappiness (F.U.) making them cranky and hard to get along with. This period goes on unabated to this very day.

The battle of Agincourt was also the start of the Hundred Year War that lasted one hundred and sixteen years counting commercials. During that period the French valiantly tried to neutralize the English Longbow-men. For a period of time they were successful.

When the French captured one of the archers, they would chop off his middle finger and release him. It takes all three center fingers to handle the bow; two fingers to draw the string and a third to hold the sparrow in the notch. With a middle finger chopped off, the archer can no longer use his weapon.

The British quickly realized they had a problem. They created a special force to protect the archers. This new force was called the Special Archers Security, or S.A.S.

(Historical Note: The SAS continued that way for a while until Oliver Cromwell founded the British Air Force, then pilots needed protection. It just never ends. The name was changed to Special Air Services and the SAS became one of the premier modern special forces, as fierce as the US Navy SEALS or the French Postal Service.)

The SAS was so effective that no archers lost their middle finger while under their protection. And so the English began to taunt the French. Whenever they would see a group of French people, they would raise their middle fingers (thereby showing the French had failed) and chant “yew, yew, yew-yew-yew” to remind them of the power of the longbow and the wood of the sturdy British yew.

So the next time you cut someone off on the road and they raise their middle finger to you and scream, “…..yew!” simply engage them in a debate about the historical significance of the battle of Agincourt. I’m sure they will be a lot less rude.