IF YOU DON'T, THEY WILL SAG

While one is growing up, the adults in one's life will supply one with all manner of advice. Some of it less than useful. Which, really, one would rather they wouldn't; one's peers already perform that service most magnificently.

Food, culture, coffee, tea, tobacco, cheating on exams, sexual matters, and alcohol are all part of the informative programme. It may take years to get all the mis-information out of one's head.


One priceless bit of nonsense delivered in all seriousness by several individuals who were convinced of its truthfulness was the datum that IF you went out at night without a hat, and you had long hair, bats would get entangled on your head, and you'd have to cut them out.
I suspect that in the day and age when European country folk were unwashed, that may have occasionally happened, what with the fleas, lice, flies, and moths, swirling in a dense cloud around the village virgin. But since the advent of soap and luke-warm water it cannot have been an issue of any magnitude. Besides, insectivorous bats zero-in on their prey using sonar, so they would easily be able to tell the difference between a moth (edible) and a peasant-girl (inedible), no matter how empty her little head.
They are very clever fliers, too.
It just wasn't credible data.
Except to simple minds.

I'll admit that it was fun on occasion to tell the bat thing to a young lady who was credulous enough to believe it. Then mentioning that one had several well-trained pet bats (a complete lie), that the last victim was now wearing a wig, and finally offering to bring the beasts to visit the hatless girl, why, the reactions were most gratifying!


My dad was able to deliver utterly unreliable bits of knowledge to Tobias and me with a completely straight face. Far better than I was capable of doing then, and even now. During the several years when we were the only people around the kitchen table, those statements would crop up after dinner was over, and I never learned to read from his expression whether it was true or complete horsepuckey. Several times my brother Tobias would turn green upon hearing it, and I would brightly absorb the information, till the logical corollary cropped up and I realized that I had been had.
My dad, as the reputed roué of Beverly Hills High before the war, was surely a man with plenty of worthwhile advice regarding the opposite gender.
I should avidly listen to his words and learn from his wisdom.
Problem was that he wanted us to stand on our own two feet.
Learn from actual investigation, not hearsay.
And he was always circumspect.

I knew from things I had heard from other people over the years that he had been a lively young man, and after he returned from bombing the Germans he had cut quite a swathe. He could have been an instructive example to his sons, except that he himself seldom gave any juicy details of his adventures, other than to mention that once a charmingly zesty woman in Panama had offered to provide him with room, board, cigarettes, and five dollars whiskey money per day.
Panama sounded like an exciting place.
They have a canal there.
It's famous!

A certain perfume reminded him of her.


It's probably a darn good thing he never had any daughters. It would have made him even more "diplomatic". And riotously straight-faced.
I can well imagine him retailing the bat and hair nonsense (as good a reason for young ladies to stay home after dark as any), along with the warnings about beer ("grows hair on your chest"), eye-shadow ("made from dead weasels"), immodest clothing ("itchy prickle burs in your nethers"), drugs ("pimples!") and several other cautionary untruths.
Things every young person believed at the time.
Knowledge, even if wrong, is power.
Although whose is the issue.

Oh, and always sit upright. Good posture is everything, and proper young ladies should not slump or splay their legs in public.

If you do, your breasts will sag.





Actually, almost anything leads to sagging breasts, NOT just slumping and bad posture. Going out after dark, beer, eye-shadow, dead weasels, short skirts, prickleburs..........
Basically, everything except pipe tobacco.
I'm an adult, I can say these things.
And I know all about sagging.


Boys! Boys especially lead to saggy tits. Stay away from boys!
You know what's good for you. If you don't, they will sag.


Trust me.



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