ERVA

Over on Dovbear's blog, a discussion is raging in which terms like 'erva', 'bisulta', 'Lot's daughters', 'pregnancy', 'fish', and 'first time' are being flung back and forth like soggy dishrags.

It is quite an intense and interesting conversation. As lomdishe disputations go. Being somewhat Talmudic, it tends toward dry.
[The conversation, that is. No details about the conditions of the ervos or fish in question are being revealed. The ervos are totally passive players. The fish are dead.]

My modest contribution was to gibber something about statistics and single-moms, compounded with three or four days of menses for Gentile women, a fortnight more-or-less for Frumme women.
[I assure you, that does not mean that Goyetes and Yiddenes are biologically different. If you really must speculate about this, think of mikvaos and bedikes.]

Lot's daughters, as you probably remember, got their dad insensate. Blind roaring. Fall down and throw up squiffy. Cabbage-looking.

* * *

Which got me wondering precisely how many pregnancies have intoxication as their primary cause.

It's a worthwhile question - the only way I'll ever get Savage Kitten pregnant is if I knock her out before knocking her up. She'd have to be lacquered sodden in order for it to happen.

Logistically, this would be easy. One teaspoon of whiskey in eight ounces of warm water guarantees her an undisturbed sleep. So imagine what two or three shots of Jameson would do.
[Savage Kitten is a petite Cantonese-American female. She neither drinks nor smokes, and doesn't dance on tabletops wearing a lampshade. I drink, I smoke, and I refuse to answer questions about lampshades - I do not know from lampshades. Savage Kitten is, in almost all ways, a proper 'ka-ting nuy' (woman of virtue and good upbringing), save for her blistering vocabulary in Toishanese (and the fact that she lives with a white guy). As my friends will tell you, I never use foul language at all ever and have a remarkably clean and polite mouth. Stop asking about the damn' lampshade.]

Strategically it would be a bad move. My life would get immeasurably more complicated if she were to end up pregnant. And less safe. Savage Kitten has done nearly twenty years of martial arts and won several medals. I cannot run very fast.

Ethically, it is out of the question. If I want that woman pregnant, I'll have to talk her into it. We've been together for close to two decades. So realistically, I should probably put it out of my mind. If I haven't managed to reyd her ein a mubereskeit by now, it ain't gonna happen.

Still, I cannot help but imagine what a brood of little Back-of-the-Hills would look like. Especially with an element of her in their genetic make-up. They'd probably look darling.