THE PRINCESS AND THE DRAGON: HIDDEN TREASURE!

So today's question is: "where do you hide the bottle of sherry that you would prefer your parents not know about?" It is an extremely important issue, as you feel that dear old Mater and Pater would think you a frightful degenerate if they discovered it. They're rather innocent, and you know that from their point of view, having a sip of oloroso after dinner while you are reading in the living room would be Sodom and Gomorrah revived. So far, they still think that it is oolong in that little porcelain bowl. They've seen you sitting there, and naturally presumed that you were swotting the books. And they will never understand that there is more to studying than mere required reading.....

Mild adventures in literary depravity are also recommended.
Which is where the Spanish fortified wine comes in.

At any age, there are certain things you strive to hide from your parents, for their own peace of mind.


For me that was pipe-smoking, until the cat blew my cover. Ever afterwards my parents worried that I might take up with the wrong crowd, and would perhaps end up as a mercenary in Africa, involved in a political struggle that made no sense. Yes, my father had been a pipe-smoker also, starting before the war when he was still a teenager at Beverly Hills Highschool.
But that did not reassure him.

Perhaps I should have asked him what he had been up to when he was my age.
It may have been far more interesting than he let on.

Parents usually fear that either their children will be just like them and do the same crazy things they did years ago, or they fear that the kids will NOT be like them, and discover new and totally irresponsible crazy things to do.

They seldom realize that reading lascivious verse in Latin or Old-French REQUIRES a spot of sherry. If only to calm frazzled young nerves.
Because it's so exciting!
Personally I would also advise you to take up the therapeutic and thoughtful habit of pipe-smoking, but that is hard to hide, and if your parents ever found out they would suspect you of almost any amount of immorality and perversion.
Sailors! My child is hanging out with sailors!

I hide my bottle of sherry in plain view. My apartment mate thinks it's purely for cooking, and never touches it. As for my pipe-smoking, she has always considered that a flaw in my character, and I'm sure her boyfriend thinks the same. Both of them are non-smokers, and never touch alcohol.

They just don't realize that a warming drop of crapularius calms the nerves when investigating the seduction of three fair damsels in an orchard six hundred years ago, or the romantic entanglement of a theologian and philosopher at Paris with the brainiac daughter of a canon eight plus centuries past. Zesty stuff! It could even lead to palpitations! Fortunately, dilute recreational ethanol is a central nervous system depressant of remarkable anxiolytic effect.
You should use it medicinally, while reading heady texts.

So the question remains, where do you hide the bottle?

I would suggest that you secrete it over at my place, but unfortunately I am a degenerate; depraved, immoral, and a frightful pervert.
After all, I'm a pipesmoker.
That's as close to hanging out with sailors as you can get!
They'd fear for your virtue if they found out.
And quite rightly so.


Come by around tea-time one of these days. We'll discuss Abelard and Heloise over cups of Darjeeling. Perhaps with a spot of amontillado.
And some bowls of Irish flake.



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