People who never met The Righteous Man insist he is an urban myth. Those who sheepishly admit encounters with him say through clenched teeth, “No, he lived and the son of a bitch is still out there.” Others, tired of the question, think he may have lived at some point, but is certainly dead now, so what possible difference does it make?
I first heard of him three years ago, while I sat drinking in a bar in Elyria, Ohio doodling on a napkin and working on my PhD. Sitting at a nearby table was Ed, a young man, maybe twenty-five, relating a sad story to Lucy, a soft spoken woman his age. His hand wrapped in many layers of surgical gauze, Ed angrily discussed a recent run-in he had had with a motorist. Painful from his point of view, Ed’s account sounded mildly humorous to me, and so I listened in, careful not to smirk at points in the story which he found humiliating.
It seems Ed had been driving his vintage Harley Davidson at a high speed across Interstate 80 near Cleveland, when he encountered a silver Ford Taurus “creeping along” in the left lane at 78 miles an hour. The highway was crowded, but Ed needed to pass the Ford. He flashed his headlight and honked a number of times before the Taurus finally moved over. As he sped past the Ford, Ed flashed its driver his middle finger, and felt slightly better for it.
The driver of the Ford seemed to receive the hand gesture in stride, and Ed thought nothing more of it. Not an hour later, at a rest stop near Youngstown, he stopped for coffee and a donut. When he returned to his Harley, he found the stranger, (about six foot three, two hundred and thirty pounds, Caucasian, approximately 40 years of age – as would be reported later) standing politely and calmly in the parking space next to his bike, leaning against a silver Ford Taurus.
The two exchanged pleasantries, and then the stranger very calmly, almost as if in Zen-like tone, asked Ed what he was thinking as they passed each other on the expressway some forty five minutes earlier.
“You were driving too slowly,” Ed replied matter-of-factly.
“I’m sorry to have angered you to such a response.”
“Forget about it. Just stay in the right lane if you don’t feel like driving.” Ed said, mounting his bike and reaching for his keys.
“I really wish you hadn’t flipped me off. It smacked of rudeness.”
“Yeah, well, so does driving too f*$%ing slowly.” Ed hissed, turning the keys in the ignition, and revving his engine.
“Let me help you remember to never, ever flip someone off that you don’t know.” Came the calm response, in a tone that resonated with certainty and regret.
“How’s that?” Ed shouted, as he kicked his bike into gear.
Calmly, gently, the odd man reached over and turned off the Harley. Enraged and yet strangely uncertain as to how to respond, the cyclist clenched his jaw and said, “Now look old man. I don’t want to hurt you, but keep your hands off my bike.”
Slowly, the stranger grabbed Ed’s left hand and snapped the middle finger. As the cyclist screamed, the stranger repeated the action twice more, each time slightly beneath the joint that had just been broken.
“Please. Be careful with your anger.” And then, the stranger got into his Taurus and slowly drove off.
Ed, too busy with the pain in his hand, said nothing. Although he tried to focus and memorialize the moment for the purpose of some future vengeance, he was in too much pain to get a license number. The mysterious stranger was simply gone. The biker winced as he reflected on this.
I stifled a laugh.
The girlfriend seemed mildly sympathetic to the story, softly kissing the biker’s hand, as if to acknowledge the injustice he had received. Unfortunately for the couple, she followed this action by saying, “Maybe you shouldn’t flip off people you don’t know.”
The cyclist was incensed. “Nobody’s going to tell me who I can flip off. Matter of fact, when I get this bandage off, I’m going to keep my hand permanently clenched in the one finger salute. That’ll teach that vigilante SOB.”
Just as Ed finished speaking, a stout man who had been sipping seltzer water at the end of the bar, got up and asked the biker if he had heard him right. Uncertain of this new threat, well aware that he was in no condition to challenge anyone, the biker quickly backed down.
“You a friend of the guy who did this to me?” Ed said weakly, holding up his hand.
“Are you flipping me off? I’ll break your finger again!”
“No. No…I was just showing you my–” Ed stammered.
“I don’t know the guy, but I wish I did. I’d buy him a drink.” The short man replied, sitting back down at the bar with satisfaction. The biker sat back and sulked. I resumed my drinking, disappointed that a barroom fight wasn’t going to break out.
It’s curious how often an old story, having never before been heard, once heard is often heard shortly thereafter, and then seems to be heard quite frequently. I told the curious story of Ed and the stranger to an acquaintance in Los Angeles, who told me that it was an old story, perhaps an urban legend. In the version he heard, however, the person whose middle finger had been broken was a high school sophomore who had been torturing a fellow student on a public bus. In the story my acquaintance told, the mysterious stranger was sitting next to the sophomore who was throwing pennies at the back of the head of a young fellow bus rider.
“Please stop doing that,” had come the Zen-like request. The coin tosser ignored the man, focusing instead on bouncing coins off the hapless victim. When the request was repeated, Coin Boy gave the stranger the finger. Again, with what seemed like regret, the vigilante resolutely grabbed the young man’s hand and broke the middle finger in three separate places, leaving it in the shape of a very thin “Z.” Bus riders looked on, too stunned to stop either the boy from screaming or the stranger from getting off the bus at the next stop. The subsequent description of the stranger, however close, did not fully match that of the assailant in the Ohio tale. (Eyewitnesses claimed the “perp”, in this instance, was about six foot three, Latino, and had weighed two hundred and thirty pounds.)
Having heard two versions of the same story, I became intrigued. Using every gathering of friends and family as an opportunity to research and document the tale, I discovered many versions existed. An uncle, a physician at Rush Hospital in Chicago, told me of being unable to fully reset the bones on the middle finger of a thirty year old real estate agent who had come to the emergency screaming of a pure victimization that, upon further review, appeared to be a bit more akin to partial retribution. It seemed the realtor was talking on the phone in a movie theater, when a theatergoer asked him quite deliberately to “take it outside.” When the agent reacted with his middle finger, the response had been swift and painful.
A neighbor told me that while in Trenton, he saw a car stop on a street corner, and its occupant deliberately dump two fistfuls of fast food wrappers onto the pavement. As the vehicle was about to pull away, a tall forty year old black man approached the car and exchanged a few words. After a moment, the black man bent down, collected all of the garbage, and jammed it back into the car from where it had emanated. Enraged, the occupant of the car jumped out, and began a very short argument. Three quick movements by the vigilante, a scream, and the driver of the car stood clutching one hand in the other.
Intrigued by the commonality and frequency of the story, I did a search and discovered www.therighteousman.com, a website that seemed to chronicle all of the sightings of this mysterious figure. Someone, perhaps the web designer, had designated the finger-breaker “The Righteous Man.” On the website, sixty-two different stories of “The Righteous Man” appeared. Each story came to the same bone breaking end, but in each instance, The Righteous Man was uniquely described.
Having visited the site and having heard a story of The Righteous Man first hand, I knew him to be more than an urban legend, but I could not accept that one man had broken sixty-two different middle fingers on sixty two different hands in sixty two different locations. I assumed there were a lot of “copy cat” Righteous Men out in the world, and quite a few folks who only wished they could be The Righteous Man.
Three months after first reading the accounts of The Righteous Man, I revisited www.therighteousman.com , only to discover that no less than 417 middle fingers around the country had been broken and documented. I was amused. Not a week after that, I came across a comic book series entitled “Snap Goes Tall Man” written and illustrated by a faithful blogger to The Righteous Man website. The drawings were crude, but humorous. The lead character seemed to morph into various sizes, races and in at least three instances, genders.
And then came the “blowback.” A manager at a Home Depot in Santa Monica reported feeling threatened by a man who said he was going to break his middle finger in three places. In response, the merchant whacked the man upside the head with a can of paint. Other instances were soon reported of people taking pre-emptive action against perceived threats of a middle finger being broken. A wife in Cleveland reportedly shot her husband because she believed that, having given him the finger in response to his criticism of her cooking, he struck a pose reminiscent of the notorious “Righteous Man.” Two fishing buddies in Charleston, SC, reportedly stabbed each other one night in a tent after each gave the other the finger, feeling threatened by each other’s anger.
And then, it died down. The number of finger breaking incidents dwindled to a precious few. For a while, the number of pre-emptive strikes against perceived threats continued to rise and then, they, too, peaked. It was all as if it had never happened. In time, the question became of great cultural interest: does “The Righteous Man” exist or is he merely an urban myth?
I was overjoyed by and benefited from the uncertainty and quickly moved to provide the world an answer. The body of my dissertation practically wrote itself. In the end, all I needed was a thesis. At first, my instinct was to play both sides, and provide substantial evidence supporting the argument of those who desperately wanted The Righteous Man to exist, while at the same time supplying an abundance of counterargument material for those who equally wished him to be myth. Ultimately, however, I realized equivocation would lead to disappointment and cause my dissertation to be rejected.
Consequently, today I have come to argue that no individual in the world can claim to be The Righteous Man. On the other hand, a small number of people, acting individually, has become a powerful collective force, that in the end, constitutes The Righteous Man as we know him/her.
Anyone with evidence to his/her existence is welcome to add it to this blog. Click on the word “Permalink” at the bottom of this page to report your sighting of The Righteous Man.
Does the Righteous Man exist or doesn’t he? When I read this, I wasn’t sure. I’ve seen people with broken middle fingers, but I always assumed they had suffered some accident. Is it possible there’s a person out there breaking rude people’s middle fingers? I honestly don’t know, but would like to find out. Please send me an email and let me know if this is a true story.
This is amazing! At the gym last week, I saw something incredibly rude and couldn’t believe such behavior was tolerated, or seemingly tolerated as I now know. I witnessed a gym member telling off another member (coincidently working out next to me) who had gently offered advice about how to correctly use one of the universal machines. I believe the member who offered the advice was acting in good conscience and had seen, as I had, the other member using the machine in a way that was sure to cause injury. The offending member started screaming obscenities and when he got no response, thrusting the middle of his left hand in my neighbor’s face. I couldn’t believe how calm my neighbor stayed, although thinking back on the incident, I remember seeing a slight tremor of.. of… rage, perhaps, run through his body as the angry and offensive member stiffly walked away. THEN JUST THIS MORNING, when I going to the gym for a late morning workout, I saw the man who had lost his temper and given the finger walking out of the gym, his left hand tightly bandaged and splinted, his face taught with pain. I guess it was a good thing he had used his left hand instead of his right, as his injury apparently didn’t stop him from visiting the gym. Was this the work of The Righteous Man?
Peachy
Chicago’s Northside
Once, while in New York, I did see someone snap a guy’s middle finger who’d flipped him off when he’d asked him to turn his radio down on the subway. The guy who did it was about 5′4′, and it was near the Yankee stadium stop.
On a personal note, I have definitely wanted to break a finger in my day when someone pissed me off, but I’ve never had the nerve. (I’d probably wind up getting pounded.)
It was the night before the night before Christmas last year, when I realized that I had needed to buy one more Christmas present for an elderly neighbor who was going to be alone for the holidays. As I scraped off the snow from my 1989 dodge, I prayed that it would start without much trouble and that I could find the prefect gift at the local mall and be home within an hour.It continued to snow, so I opted for the closest Walmart instead. I quickly parked and as I was crossing in parking lot, I noticed a parked car with 3 small children inside. They were left alone in the car! I couldn’t believe it. I looked around to see if anyone was coming. Why would someone leave their children in the car unsupervised and on such a cold night. I waited ten minutes. No one came. I went inside and asked at the service desk to announce on the pa system that owner of the “blue 4-door malibu” come to the front desk.No one came. I purchased the poinsetta and warm fleece robe for my neighbor. I waited in my car for the driver of the blue car to come and rescue the 3 little ones still shivering in the cold car. I waited an hour. After another 15 mintues, the owner of the car arrived! Just as I was about to give this woman a piece of my mind, a 5′-4″ man approached the woman and proceeded to help her with her packages! After helping her, and without saying a word, he then “snapped” her middle finger!
I had just witnessed a Righteous Man sighting.
About 3 years ago when I a was visting an historic site out east, I saw two young children dismantling an old stone wall. They were throwing the stones into the Potomac River. I figured they were just playing and did not understand what they were doing, so I calmly told them why they should not break down the wall. I stood in front of them so they could not easily throw the stones and tried to explain that they were tearing apart something that had historic significance. Along came a man who started yelling at me to leave his kids alone. I tried explaining that I was just trying to stop the kids from damaging the old wall, but he only swore louder and gave me the finger, telling me his kids could do whatever they wanted. I left shaken and more upset. Then, in the funny way that some people in tourist towns run in to each other at other tourist attractions, I saw the same guy the next day with his two kids eating at a concession stand. I’m not sure if he saw me- he kept looking down, but much to my surprise, I saw that his hand was bandaged- the same fist he shook at me was now immobilized and he was struggling to eat a hot dog in this left hand. I’d heard something about a guy called the Righteous Man before, and I tried to recall if anyone was around when I was on my “save the wall” crusade, but could not remember whether anyone else was around. Maybe this guy just flipped off the wrong guy, or maybe there is something to this Righteous Man stuff.
I can’t believe I’m writing this letter. As I type, the hair on the back of my neck is standing on ends. I was searching the Internet for a medical site that would tell me the symptoms of a broken finger and I came across your sight. I think I may have met the righteous man.
Tonight as I drove home on the Kennedy expressway in Chicago, my phone rang and I answered it. As I talked to my wife on the phone and fumbled for a pen to write down her last minute grocery list I forgot the fact that the entrance for the express lanes was coming up on my left. With ¼ mile to go I put my left blinker on to merge to the on-ramp but typically none was going to let me in so I do what I have always have done I gradually merged into the lane. I thought for a small instant that the mustang would not let me in and we would touch but at the last minute he hit his breaks and I merged on the express lanes.
As I continued to write down everything on my now growing list I noticed in my rear view mirror the mustang riding my ass. I swear he must have been less than a foot away from my back bumper. As the lanes gradually opened up I thought he would pass me and I actually switched lanes so he could go around but he remained on my tail. I tried to write down his license plate but I could not see it because he was so close. Jesus Christ I thought to myself what’s wrong with this guy. My middle finger shot up 3 seconds before I realized what a useless and juvenile act it was. At this point I could not even pretend I was adjusting the rearview mirror. He saw it and now he was 1 inch away from my car.
What was that? Did he bump me? Oh great, I’m going to wind up on page six of the Sun-Times tomorrow. I wonder if he’s some gang-banger and he’s probably on his cell phone now calling his gang-banger buddies to come kick my ass. My exit was coming up soon and maybe he won’t get off the expressway with me.
Well here he comes. How does he stay so close? If I tap my brakes I know he will hit me. As we came up to the stoplight I tried to leave enough room in front of me in case this guy gets out of his car and I could scoot around the car in front of me but my plan failed. The car in front of me stopped too quick and now psycho man was right behind me. I shouldn’t quit Karate when I was a red belt.
Here he comes. He doesn’t look that big. Actually I outweigh him by 30 pounds. Maybe he’s a marine or worse maybe he has a gun. If he has a tattoo I’m dead. I’ll keep my window up just in case. Maybe the light will change and I can speed up and lose him. Tap, Tap, Tap. Shit! I look straight ahead. I’m such a pussy. Tap, Tap, Tap. Fuck! I crack my window and yell, “What do you want jag-off?” He smiled and said sorry. What? He said he was sorry he tailed gated me. I cracked my window a little more. He said, he just had a huge fight with his girlfriend and that he decided he would take a ride and cool off and that’s when we had our little misunderstanding. He said he was truly sorry.
My window was now all the way down. I told him it was my fault and that I was writing down my wife’s grocery list and I should have merged over earlier. He smiled and said it would make him feel better if he could give me some money for the groceries. I told him I didn’t need it and he cut me off and insisted. He said it would quell his already guilty conscious and he took a twenty out of his wallet and held it out for me. Time froze for a minute. The deepest part of me said no but I finally reached out for the bill. The next moment was like it was happening in a movie. The pain almost made me faint. I felt my foot lighten up on the break and I was lucky to have the presence of mind to not lunge forward. I heard my finger break. It was like a branch from a tree. I remember the sound from when I broke Pat O’Malleys pencil in 6th grade because he caught me looking at Myra Fernandez and was kidding me. Snap! By the time I realized what had happened he was walking back to his car. He pulled around me and I thought. Shit what just happened? I looked down to get his license plate number but it was too dark and I was stuck behind a Mom yelling at her kids. God D$%$ it! The pain is unbelievable. At least it’s not my pointer. How the hell did he snap my middle finger so quickly? Who is this guy.
So as I read the stories about this righteous man I am wondering, did I meet him? I wish I had a decent description of him, but all I can say is that he was the most average looking guy I have ever seen. I see 20 guys a day who look like him. He had no distinguishing characteristics. He was unbelievably average. Someone has got to stop this idiot before he kills someone. Someone who has the balls to do what he did to me and appears to do the same thing to other people will not stop at just breaking fingers. We got to find the righteous man. %$#%^!
A few summers ago, my family and I were visiting relatives in Oregon, my hometown. It was the third night we were there and in the middle of dinner my father began talking about some chain letter he received that really freaked him out. Now, if you knew my father, you would understand how rare it was that he checked his email, and he often would just delete chains. So the fact that he had taken the time and actually cared what it had to say intrigued me and my wife, (she knows him well, too). He began rambling about it and told me the story of the righteous man, though in his version, the man resembled a movie version of a squat italian mobster. It seems the righteous man seen a man screaming at a woman on the corner (perhaps a girlfriend). When the righteous man intervened on behalf of the woman, he had been “flipped off.” The rest is either history or myth. My father ended up just shaking the whole thing off convincing himself it was just a hoax, though a clever one! Once we returned back to the midwest, (Madison to be exact), I immediately looked it up online, but found nothing. It suprised me that something so widespread through a chain wasn’t available on google, which briefly intrigued me. I forgot about the whole thing after a few weeks, (raising 2 boys and a girl doesn’t leave a lot of time!), but recently heard about it again. This time from a close family friend. It was virtually the same thing, though the roles were reversed and the righteous man was actually a tall blonde woman at a laundromat who had witnessed a one sided screaming match between a man and woman. I decided I would google the righteous man again and came across this blog. Anyway, I thought I would share my experience with this story and see if anyone has heard about similar identities. It would be great if I could get updates or something whenever he/she is spotted. Thanks.
Contact me at REFitz@yahoo.com
It happpened today. I was in the express line at the Red Lion food store in Sunset Beach, NC. The man ahead of me had 29 items (I counted as I waited) in the line that read “15 items or less.” I mentioned to the man that it was the express line and maybe he should have gone to a different line to check out. He gave me the finger and told me to get a life. I finished paying for my 9 items (milk, 3 oranges, a dozen eggs, 4 yogurts) and went to my car. In the parking lot, I saw an older man snap the finger of the guy who had 29 items. It wasn’t me who did it. I swear. The “snapper” got into a silver Ford Taurus and drove off.
About 10 months ago I was at a car wash where the day laborers will dry your car for a dollar after you run through the automated line, when a guy comes out of the car wash behind me in a black Lincoln Navigator, spinning hubs and all, and stops right next to where I am parked. He gets out of his car, takes out his floor mats, and starts banging them together, sending clouds of high-priced SUV dust onto my just washed car. I asked him politely to move, and got a few choice words and a bronx cheer in return. I saw this same guy a few days later in the parking lot at the grocery store up the block, getting into his sparkling Navigator, with a conspicuous splint on his middle finger. Coincidence?
Almost every morning at About 3 a.m, in my neighborhood in Silverlake, (LA), a guy used to drive by on a regular basis with his car stereo blasting. He had to know that people were sleeping at that hour. He just seemed oblivious. I yelled out to him once, back in February 2006, and said, “Hey, turn it down, pal!” He responded by slowing down and then giving me the finger. For about a week, he would come down my street and stop in front of my house and listen to an entire song at full blast. I wanted to call the police on him, but was a bit afraid he might do something to me. Then, it all stopped. About two weeks later, I happened to be awake at 3 and noticed his car. But his radio wasn’t blasting. I also noticed he was driving with one hand. His right hand was taped in big gauze. His middle finger immobilized. Now that I read your blog, I think maybe the Righteous Man had struck again.
So it’s 3:30 in the afternoon and I’m stuck behind a school bus, dropping off a couple of kids at the corner. The driver has his sign out, so I can’t go around. Suddenly, this guy behind me starts honking like a maniac. I look back at him, shrug my shoulders, and point to the stop sign sticking out of the driver’s side of the bus. The guy keeps honking. He’s in a red Chrysler 300, and he keeps on glaring at me. I turn back and say, “It’s a school bus, buddy, there’s not a lot I can do.” The guy gives me the finger and roars around me and the bus only to get stuck at a red light that’s just ahead of the bus. While we’re all sitting there, the bus driver gets out of his bus, walks over to the 300, grabs the guy’s middle finger and snaps it. After the bus went around the guy, I did, too.
There is some evidence of the Righteous man as part of a historical tradition that can be traced back to ancient Palestine.
Recent archeological findings point to a comment made in the Q sources of early Christian writings regarding the prohibition of doing physical damage to any Pharasees or Sadducees. A second source of Rabbinical writings seems to support the Q source by documenting a rash of attacks against these two privileged classes that occurred in a three year period circa 10-28 B.C.E.
Though the exact dates are hard to determine, the timing of these attacks against the Pharasees and Sadducees have a
potential correlation to the timeframe of Jesus of Nazareth’s public ministry. As to the specific nature of the physical attacks, it is difficult to attain. The only evidence the sources provide is a reference to the yad, or hand in ancient Aramaic. In addition the word אֶצְבַּע צְרֵדָה was referred to in the text.
I hope this new research sheds some light on your research.
I was in a mom and pop grocery store on Locust Street in Philadelphia, when I ran into a man with both of his middle fingers in bandages. I was taken aback by the curious combitation of both of his middle fingers in little mini casts,that I stared at them for a moment or two.
The man with the missing “tall men” was a grocer clerk named Alex. Alex had been bagging groceries when I stared a bit too long at his hands.
“Kind of strange looking, isn’t it?” he said as I abruptly averted my eyes.
“I’ll tell you the story if you’d like to hear it” he said with a tone that suggested I could take it or leave, and it would be all the same to him.
“I’d love to hear the story, ” I said, almost entranced.
“I was walking down Broad Street on a rainy Thursday afternoon and there were puddles everywhere. I knew that once the kdis got out of school, I would get soaked. Sure enough, 3:30 came and three cars drove by in quick succession, each seemingly deliberately crashing into puddles that soaked me. Well, I got so pissed off, I started giving everyone the twin tall man salute, even when they weren’t deliberately swerving into puddles to soak me. I’m 6 foot five, so I figured I could handle any kid who didn’t like getting flipped off.”
He coughed and then continued, “Well, it got out of control, I realize now. I starting preemptorily flipping people off, and the truth is, not every car was trying to run into puddles and splash me. In fact, a number of cars swerved out of the wa, one almost hit another car, just to avoid soaking me,as a matter of fact. I didn’t care. I still gave everyone the finger.”
“Well, this silver Taurus drove by, very gingerly, trying not to get me wet. I flipped him off, I don’t know why. Maybe I’m just an angry guy. Wouldn’t you know it, the guy gets out of his car, and snaps both of my middle fingers. I don’t know that he ever said a word to me. I felt ashamed but now feel oddly compelled to tell the story to anyone who stares at my hands.”
“I don’t know how you feel abotu hearing it,” he said as he turned to fill the next customer’s grocery bag, “but I always feel slightly better for having told the tale.”
I’m a teacher, so I see hundreds of kids’ hands every year. One day last year, I broke up a pretty loud argument between 2 of our brilliant seniors, one of whom had just transferred in from a rough school across town. Turns out this kid had both middle fingers twisted oddly outwards, which made his hands look more like ugly claws. After the incident, and after I’d seen him a few times in passing, I asked him about his fingers. He told me had gotten into it — in juvenile hall, no less — with a ‘counselor’ over some clean-up issue which turned into a big ‘respect’ standoff. Freakishly enough, the counselor (he told me) jumped to the conclusion that the kid was giving him the finger. Lesson learned? I doubt it; the kid was visibly fuming as he recalled it.
I was golfing in Minneapolis when a ball came zooming by my head on the 18th hole and almost hit my playing partner. My playing partner was a man I never met, about 45, clean shaven, brown hair, about 6′ 3”. He said his name was Ted, that he was from Chicago, and that he wasn’t much of a golfer. I think he shot a 92. Anyway, the errant ball that almost hit me landed and rolled to about four feet from Ted. I was angry the guy hadn’t yelled “fore” and when he approached us, I asked him to yell a warning the next time he hit a wild shot. The guy doesn’t say a thing, but he flips me off. The next thing I know, Ted grabs the guy by his middle finger and breaks it in two places. I couldn’t believe it. The guy left the course screaming he was going to get a lawyer, but Ted seemed unfazed. He bought me a couple of drinks in the clubhouse, then drove off in his Ford Taurus. I wonder if it was the “Righteous Man.”