Fisting

Look no further than the First Family for relationship advice. Barack and Michelle Obama sure know how to demonstrate their affection, by touching, kissing, and... what??



Ah, fisting. They really are in love. I like how the commentator implies that they engage in fisting publicly.

In all seriousness, I suspect that this act is what she erroneously referred to as fisting.
Actually, it's called pounding. Or as another intrepid Fox reporter calls it, a "terrorist fist jab."

I, too, am guilty of using the word "fisting" when I don't mean cramming one's entire hand up another person's sexual orifice. When I taught poetry to my ninth graders, I wanted to devise an activity to make sure the students didn't just rush through the poem in ten seconds and derive no meaning from it, as they were inclined to do. My plan was to come up with several key literary terms and have the students identify these elements in each poem. After coming up with the terms I wanted them to apply, I went about trying to turn them into an acronym so it would be easy to remember. After anagramming the initial letters for a while, I decided the best acronym was FISTTTT.

Figurative Language
Imagery
Symbolism
Title's Significance
Tone
Theme
Thesis Statement

I was apprehensive to use this acronym, considering my students were perverted and could quite easily turn FISTTTT into a crude joke. Fortunately, FISTTTT was successful on multiple fronts: it actually made the students have to reflect upon the poems and apply other knowledge and the students never realized the sexual connotation. It probably helped that I tried to pre-empt going in a sexual route by taking us down a violent one instead. I introduced FISTTTT by "giving the poem a fist!" and literally punching the poem in the textbook, a lead which many students were more than happy to follow. Being aggressive with school materials probably isn't the most appropriate approach, however, this is America, where violence is tolerated far more than sex, so I'm sure someone's willing to champion my cause.

Throughout the month-long poetry unit, the students completed the FISTTTT activity many times. The repetition is what prompted them to start making unintentionally hilarious comments like "Do we have to fist today?!" and "I'm tired of fisting!" If it was going over their heads, I wasn't to change that, even if it was my job to "educate." As hormonal as these young teenagers were, they clearly were still a dirty YouTube search away from being exposed to the concept of sitting on a knuckle sandwich. Given that the kids fisted after reading each poem, it did give some credence to my students' belief that poetry is gay, but that was something for me to chuckle about privately.

The inside joke was not as easily concealed with adults, however. My teaching mentor did an observation and asked about the homework assignment on the board: "Read 'The Road Not Taken' by Robert Frost and FISTTTT it." "It sounds funny," she admitted with a smile, so I explained the logistics of it. She put a positive spin on it. "Well it looks good. If it's easy for the kids, then great. You've got to try a lot of different things until you find something that works for you and makes you happy, and if that means using a FISTTTT, then go for it." I had thought she was in on the joke, but I'm still not sure whether or not she was double entendre-ing like crazy on purpose.