Tinsley (20) was just flashing us a friendly peace sign with a pinkie promise, right? Jeffery A. Salter

By John Walters

To be honest, a few of us here at SIOC had never heard of it before last September. Not before our cover shoot for the "Best College Football Weekends" issue, for which we had assembled an ardent army of Tennessee football players, cheerleaders, fans and even Smokey the mascot. Our older-than-25 editors, upon seeing the photos, were geeked.

However, it was then that writer Matthew Waxman, 25, pointed out a hand signal Vols wide receiver Derrick Tinsley was flashing. Tinsley had raised his index, middle and pinkie fingers in the air. The tip of his ring finger bent forward to touch his thumb.

"Eh, you know what that is, don't you?" Waxman asked, and then proceeded to enlighten us, much to the amusement of his young compadres.

Seriously? we replied. No! Are you sure? Those of us old enough to remember E.T.'s aroused index finger had assumed Tinsley's gesture was innocent as well. Maybe the latest hip-hop sign that we had yet to catch on to. (That Q-Tip, he's da bomb!) Someone else suggested that Tinsley was flashing a peace sign with a pinkie promise thrown in for good measure.

Holy hand signals, Batman, how naive were we? We searched for words to describe our reaction: Addled. Agape. Aghast. Agog. And that was just the A's.

Obviously, we could not run that photo. Even if that was not what Tinsley meant -- maybe it was a tribute to Dale Earnhardt -- it's the interpretation that matters. After all, many of the students raised one finger in that same photo, but nobody raised only their middle one. (Some things are best left obscene and not heard.) We replaced this cover photo with something tasteful and refined: a topless male torso, body-painted orange, emblazoned with a white T.

Contretemps avoided. But then, as the academic year progressed, a strange phenomenon began to unspool: That digital diorama went from strictly invasive to strangely pervasive. From iniquity to ubiquity. It graduated from the occasional sighting to being everywhere. Kind of like Jamie Foxx. Where did we find it? Where didn't we find it?

Kids, look around and tell us if this symbol doesn't provoke a visceral reaction, even in a seemingly innocent guise. Look on the inside cover of the Arizona State football media guide. Guys and gals in full frolic, flashing both varying degrees of toplessness and that symbol (as if they'd combined our two cover concepts) -- although Sun Devils loyalists swear it represents a pitchfork. Or there, on the cover of the Houston men's basketball media guide. There's Cougars coach Tom Penders flashing his pearly whites and ... that symbol (even if that also happens to be Houston's Cougar paw sign, which has existed since 1953).

Enough? No. Just last month that bastion of liberal erudition, The New Yorker, introduced the term into the literary consciousness. In a profile on the founders of Collegehumor.com, it was reported that the site has taken out a patent on a variation of the foam finger. ("Yeah, Mom, it means 'We're Number 3'!") In a little over a year they have sold nearly 20,000 units at a net profit of about $200,000. And meanwhile, you're sitting there trying to scrounge beer money on partypoker.net. In the ad the product is touted as "Not yet obscene to the general public" as well as a "great Mother's Day gift!"

Really? And yet, as dexterously distressing as this gesture may be, it is also the Great Underground Joke on campus. In fact, there's even a university located in the heart of the heartland that employs both the gesture and its title for its sports teams. Some school in Kansas. Around Wichita, I believe.

Issue date: March 3, 2005