index finger for yes, middle finger for no

Learning to drive is never easy, as anyone who's tried to master the art will know. Therefore I was fully behind E when he decided to convert his Albanian lisence to an Italian one. It didn't seem too tricky a process- he just had to take the theory test and then be observed a bit driving. He studied hard, battling through the pages-long manual, following the text with his finger as he mouthed the words to himself (he left school at 14 and is a slow reader). He took the test the day after the accident on two hours sleep and unsurprisingly failed, although not by much. He re-booked and took it again a month later, and this time failed by one mark.

Here comes the moral dilema: being bored and frustrated by the process he then told me he was going to 'buy' his lisence. He proceeded to phone around various 'contacts' at the driving school agency to get some prices. I was, and still am being very purse-lipped and English about the whole thing, despite being simultaneously fascinated. "But how does it work?" I asked him. "Well, I give the guy a few hundred euros now, and then the rest on the day of the exam".

The day before the exam he went to meet the contact to discuss how it would be done, and it was explained that for every question read out the examiner would raise one finger slightly if the answer was 'yes' and another if it was 'no'. Yesterday he set off happlily to the test centre and handed over the rest of the cash- half for the contact at the driving centre and half for some senior guy who works for the state. I saw him later that day. "Well...?" He laughed; "I passed" and then "why are you still pulling those faces? Everyone does it".

I'm still not sure how I feel about this. If 'everybody does it' then perhaps the driver who broke my leg did it too. Maybe I'm just being overly sensitive and within a year or so will be pushing envelopes under tables left, right and centre too.