Last week’s controversial lecture on the state of the Middle East and the future of warfare will stay in my mind for a long time to come, but not because of any particularly bold or memorable argument put forth by guest speaker Dr. Daniel Pipes.

No, I will remember the evening because of the unnerving behavior of a twenty-something sitting in the seventh row on the left. I sat a row in front of him and hadn’t even noticed the man until long after the UW’s Donald Downs gave his always entertaining and thoughtful introduction. These days, such introductions seem to always include a plea to the audience to maintain order during the presentation, a plea that a select few had no intention of honoring.

After nearly 15 minutes into Dr. Pipe’s lecture, I observed and noted how respectful the attendees directly in front of me were. To my surprise, I recognized some faces as the folks who were reportedly trying to get Pipes “un-invited” to speak earlier in the semester.

Curious, I turned around to get a feel for the sentiments of the rest of the audience. Sure enough, the usual suspects were there with their posters and flyers. Some showed up in costume, notably a wicked witch who Pipes later stated “was as stupid as he looked.”

I continued to pan the Great Hall behind me, and just before returning my focus to Pipes, I saw two dudes. In a classic example of life imitating Hollywood, stupid became stupider just as dumb will become dumber in theaters June 17th.

The first dude wasn’t so unnerving if not for the fact that he looked like a strung-out version of Brad Pitt’s character in “Seven Monkeys,” only with dreadlocks. Scruffy lean face, yellow tinted sunglasses … I am telling you this dude was a dead-ringer. Pitt’s character in that movie is an eccentric animal rights eco-terrorist, and seeing him in this lecture on terrorism was just too spooky to ignore.

To Pitt’s right sat another dude, staring into the back of the man in front of him and extending his right middle finger at Pipes. He wasn’t flippantly flipping the bird in response to something objectionable Pipes said. He was just holding it there, now 20 minutes into the lecture.

I became fixated on this guy’s ability to hold that finger out there. Word after word, sentence after sentence, he held his finger up. I sat dumbfounded.

As much as it may pain my mother to hear it, I have flipped people the bird. It is nearly always in the heat of the moment. Whether directed at Jonathon Orr after dropping a pass in San Antonio or Chris Chambers dropping a pass in Camp Randall, it is difficult to control such a reaction, especially under the influence.

Anonymous drivers sometimes get the bird from me. Just like dropped passes in important games, inattentive drivers doing the speed limit in the left lane annoy me to such a point of rage my middle finger has nowhere to go but straight in the air, directed at the oblivious offender.

In all these cases, I eventually regain my composure and put my finger back where it belongs. I don’t know how anyone could be so enraged that they felt it necessary to flip the bird for 45 minutes straight. And it’s a good thing, because the gesture would lose all meaning if everyone flipped off the TV each time another lack-luster episode of “Friends” came on.

It is all too easy to succumb to the old man syndrome. As someone who now works to pay his loans and his taxes, the cliché “old man bitterness” has already crept in. I try to fight it off, lest my kids one day think I’m not cool, but the dude who put so much energy into flipping Pipes the bird really got to me.

I hope I don’t sound too much like an old man when I say that dude was a true piece of … oh forget it. I think I’ll just keep quiet for a while.

A.J. Hughes ([email protected]) is a software developer and UW graduate.