Back when I was kicking it on the mean streets of Chapel Hill, the cool kids simultaneously decided that flashing each other a sideways peace sign was the way to say Hello, I love you Man, or Would you like to borrow my John Mayer cd? It was at once an homage to the 80's -- the decade of our birth -- and a vague attempt to appear gangster, or as Michael Scott would say, "urban," and I embraced it with as much gusto as a WASP-y coed can muster.
Some examples (and throwbacks!):
I even did it in front of some Germans at the Reichstag in Berlin:
Ok, maybe that's a straightforward peace sign, but you get the point. It was my very own international sensation. I was flashing them left and right when I got to Scotland, mostly to a lot of people I didn't know very well, and more importantly, to a lot of people who weren't raised on the mean streets of North Carolina. I continued to recieve blank stares in return. Not to be dissuaded, I flashed two at once (or, the "double dragon") in front of St Andrews cathedral one bright October day in 2006 in what I like to think is the last documented innocent peace sign:
You got me straight trippin, boo. At last, a friend of mine who was raised far, far away from Compton and for whom the word "Puffy" will always describe the undereye region after a hard night out looked at me and said "why do you keep doing that to us."
It wasn't a question so much as a statement. She seemed vaguely offended. I was shocked.
"What?" I asked, "the peace sign?"
"Yes" she said. "I thought we were friends."
"It's an endearing hand gesture!" I offered lamely -- struggling in vain to describe the origins and connotations of the sideways peace sign -- "It's like, peace man, what's up, yeah!"
She looked at me incredulously and said "But.... don't you know what that means here?"
No, of course I don't know what it means. If I did I probably wouldn't have done it at that job interview or in my professor's office or standing in the choir loft at St Salvator's chapel as everyone filed out after evensong.
This has been a long set-up to my latest discovery: I have effectively given 'the finger' to approximately half the population of the United Kingdom.
Turns out that the backwards peace sign, or "bowfinger" as it is known here, has been an obscene gesture in these parts since the Roman occupation. It is said that the Romans, in a brutal campaign to crush the indigenous population into submission, cut the first two fingers of the right hand off of every man, rendering them incapable of drawing back a bowstring to defend themselves. The cocky Romans proceeded to prance about flashing their two bowfingers at the oppressed locals as if to say "yeah, take that, boo ya," and thus: a national symbol of defiance and the downfall of Lauren Macnorthup was born.
So: if you ever decide to move to Scotland, for god sakes don't spend the first year unknowingly flipping everyone off. Your embarassment will be positively staggering.
