Empathy Test

…[I]f you don’t want sex on the first date, don’t go back to the guy’s apartment, get naked, and engage in fellatio.
From the catalog of “Darleen Click’s 21st Century Greet Cards.”

I was a teenager in the ‘70’s, when everybody pretended girls and boys are the same. This being the case, it was impossible to explain to a teenage boy that you don’t want sex—teenage boys literally cannot imagine such a thing…
Um, I was a teenager in the ’70’s, too. I got the message pretty emphatically actually. Of course, I had the benefit of multiple etiquette books about things like dating, which fork to use, girls, how to greet people senior to you in age or dating, dating, general deportment, girls, girls’ fathers and other assorted topics.
Then I attended Mizzou, back when it was a decent university–Latin motto at the time: In Beero Veritas–and things sort of evened themselves out.

Moving on—David, what about the blowtorch? Does it work?

All the clocks in Yellow Springs stopped in 1967, and they like it that way.
Sounds like Berkeley.

‘Bout bloody time.
It’ll be interesting to see if anyone spots how much of it has been cribbed from the comments section of this ‘ere blog. I had to ask at least two people for permission to use their material…

A few years back, I was on a long flight in a seat immediately ahead of a young child who insisted on kicking my chair repeatedly. Upon realizing that the kicking was not likely to stop of its own accord, nor through any intervention on the part of the “parent,” I turned around and politely said, “Young man, please stop kicking my seat.”
When the kicking resumed a few minutes later, I turned again, and with a bit more force said, “Young man, I’ve asked you nicely once already. Stop kicking my seat.” This time, I had several minutes of peace, before the lovely urchin became “kicky” once again.
As I had run through most of my patience at this point, my third reply was fairly curt: “Kid, knock it off!” His mother made the effort to lower her magazine and glare at me. I was happy to return the favor.
On the next iteration, I broke out the phrase I learned from my father when I first wandered into the adult world. “Lady, one of us needs to smack your kid!”
The anger and contempt I got from the look on her face might have cowed a lesser man. Fortunately, I was buoyed by the supportive laughter of the other travelers around us.
The story has a happy ending: the FA wisely intervened and moved the young family to the back of the plane, where there were plenty of empty seats that the delightful child could kick to his heart’s content. I read a few pages of my book and then dozed most of the way to Atlanta.