In a recent column, I was looking for a safe and effective way to promote communication between drivers who have inadvertently committed some driving faux pas like cutting each other off.

I had done exactly that, and knew I was in the wrong, but had no graceful way to respond to the other driver's Middle Digit Salute. We need a gesture that says, "Sorry - my fault," or just, "Whoops."

Someone suggested that American Sign Language, with its rich vocabulary for hands, fingers, and body, has something to offer. The sign for "I love you" might be a start.

You know it, the index finger and the pinkie extended upward, two middle fingers folded down, the thumb forming an "L" with the index finger. Triumphant athletes send it to loved ones in the stands and it has essentially replaces "Hi, Mom" from people who find themselves in range of a TV camera.

I ruled out, however, signals involving the fingers for fear of misinterpretation. I have a hunch there are more people out there who know what an extended middle finger means than those who know ASL for "I love you."

A phone call the afternoon that column appeared confirmed my suspicion.

The caller was Betty DeJesus, a now-retired nurse I've known and respected for more years than either of us might want to admit.

"Sallie," she said in her soft, Boston-flavored voice. "I read your column today, and I just had to tell you what happened to me."

Betty's hearing has been failing as long as I've known her and she has reached the point where she needs a hearing aid. She was driving her little red car to her audiologist, and had her youngest granddaughter Danielle, 17, her "special" grandchild for the way she works to overcome her disabilities.

Danielle is particularly proud that she's learning sign language, and has been trying to teach it to her grandmother for the day her hearing aid will no longer do the job.

They were working on the sign for "I love you," when they had to stop for a traffic light, Betty tried to form the sign herself, not easy with fingers stiffened by arthritis.

When she finally succeeded, I suspect she may have held up her hand to admire what she'd done. Suddenly she became aware of the car that had pulled up next to hers to wait for the light. The driver was glaring at her, and when the light changed, he shot her a bird and scratched off.

Betty's reaction? She was mortified. There's no way in the world Betty - soft-spoken, genteel, gray-haired Betty - would have stooped to anything so common, and she was embarrassed to think anyone else could imagine she would.

She arrived at the clinic where her doctor works, and as she was signing in, realized that the staff was convulsing with laughter. The receptionist explained to her what was going on:

Dr. "Jones"(who is not Betty's audiologist) had just come to work and was in a rage. When his staff asked what was wrong, he snarled that he had pulled up to wait for a light, when, for no reason at all, a little gray-haired grandmother in a red car shot him a bird.

Whatever sign we decide on as an apology, we'll have to publicize it well so everyone knows what it means. A New York Times columnist, John Tierney, published a piece headlined "Inventing a Hand Signal to Offset the Classic Gesture of Road Rage."

At present, he says, there is only one universally understood "classic gesture." (Elsewhere I read that that gesture is thought to date