Just a gleam in my daddy’s eye 
Elysian, you haven’t read Georgette Heyer yet? :eek: Are you ever in for a treat! 
It’s true, her books were out of print for a long while, since she wrote in the '30s and '40s mostly. But they’re being reissued in paperback. And well they should be, since she was the founder of the Regency romance as we know it, and a superb storyteller.
She did a few books set in other historical periods, and some mysteries set in her own era. But her Regency novels are the best.
Steer away from Powder and Patches – it’s her first novel, and frankly not up to the standards she set later. But do look for, oh, good starters would be Fredericka, or The Grand Sophie, or Sylvester, Or the Wicked Uncle, or The Convenient Marriage, or… well, you’ll be delighted to discover that she was a prolific author.
I like The Talisman Ring, myself. I know I’ve read (and enjoyed) many of her books, but that’s the only one I really remember. Although that could just be because it’s also the only one I own.
Some teachers seem to try. I was talking to a (junior-high?) English teacher for gifted behaviour-problem students one day on the bus, and she asked what I was reading. It happened to be an omnibus of some of Raymond Chandler’s hard-boiled-detective novels, and included one of his essays. I read her the line “But down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid.” She made a note, and said she’d definitely look at using his stuff. She says she uses all sorts of things in her classes, and does get the students interested.
And, Wang-Ka, your story again demonstrates your mastery!
I’ve used Larry Gonick’s *The Cartoon History Of The Universe * to great effect, teaching Special Ed social studies. At least part of the trick, though, is to make the kids think they’re *getting away with something. *
“Alright… we’re going to get our textbooks out, right? So that if the principal walks by, he’ll see our textbooks open on our desks, right? Oookay, everyone take one of these handouts with cartoons on them…”
…and suddenly, they’re connecting the cartoon text and pictures with the stuff in their textbooks. It can be downright magic. But I dunno how far I’d get with it if I didn’t make 'em think I could get fired for doing it.
(Nobody’s gonna say boo to me about it, but I don’t dare tell THEM that. They’d never read the stuff, then.)
Just makes me wonder what kind of results I could get if I could somehow tie all that hormone-driven motivation into reading assignments? Man, I read more World War Two stuff out of *sheer insane horniness * than I ever would have out of simple curiosity, and FAR more than I would have read if some dull old teacher had been floggin’ it…
Oooh! Oooh! Did you see that the third volume of Larry Gonick’s series is out? I bought it as soon as I set eyes on it. I didn’t like it as much as the first one, but then what could surpass that masterpiece?
If you haven’t read it, I would definitely recommend Bill Bryson’s A Brief History of Nearly Everything. Awesome book, delightfully funny and informative. I bet your students would get a kick out of it.
I’d assumed that it was because the pictures that she saw were aimed at turning on men, and did little to explain to a (hetero) girl what sex might be about and what was so interesting about it. I know that the porn magazines I found as a girl (abandoned in the woods, in a friend’s father’s truck, etc.) was like that; it had lots of naked women showing off their bods and not much else. You knew it was supposed to be something to do with sex (whatever that was), but it usually just showed naked women, or sometimes naked women doing stuff with each other. It wasn’t any help at explaining the situation to me.
Your point is well taken. I started out bein’ a smartass, and wound up learning something about women.
Then again, if women had been this forthcoming when I was twelve, I might have been way less confused…
The comment about comparing cartoons to the textbook reminds me of something one of my high school teachers did. The course was AP Calculus, and we had already taken the AP exam, so we were just doing stuff to fill out the remainder of the semester. One day, the teacher divided us into groups and gave us a sheet with a list of words and phrases on it. We were to put them into a story describing the life of some famous mathematician. When we finished, each group shared their story. Finally, she passed out papers which had the TRUE STORY of the mathematician’s life. We all sat there and read the story with great interest. It was a lot of fun.
On an unrelated note, I think part of what made your story so fun to read was that I just finished reading The Speed of Dark by Elizabeth Moon*. It is the story of an autistic man, given an opportunity to become “normal”. Part of the enchantment of the story, and of **Master Wang-Ka’s **story is that hard to define sense of superiority or smugness when reading about someone who doesn’t quite understand how society works, but is working so hard to do so. (And in the case of Lou, the main character of the book, his puzzlement when “normal” people fail to behave the way that he has been told normal people behave.)
*Elizabeth Moon, in case that name sounds familiar but the book doesn’t, writes science fiction, mostly with female main characters(Heris Serrano, Esmay Suiza). While I enjoyed this book, I’d have to admit that the only reason I investigated it was because it was by an author I know I usually like. Another example of someone learning about something because it was connected to something which interested me, rather than because of a “need” to know about the subject.
The Elizabeth Moon book sounds interesting. So does Cartoon History Vol. III. I’ve known about it for quite some time, but durned if I can find it for sale anywhere. I figure I’ll eventually wind up ordering the thing…
I would also take a moment to gripe about the methodology of teaching sex, sexual mores, and the mechanics, ethics, and theory and practice of one of the more important things human beings do.
I’ve never been a fan of the “abstinence” plan. Telling kids to simply not have sex when their hormones are screaming at them to do the exact opposite is not a good idea.
Sure, some kids will obey. Other kids won’t. This will happen no matter what we teach them.
What bugs me is the idea that we’re teaching the next generation only what the most conservative among us want them to know.
The kids aren’t fools, you know. When they figure out they’re being fed a line of bull, it’s a very short jump between there, and the conclusions, “The grownups can’t possibly know anything,” or “They don’t know and don’t care how we feel,” or “They’re just feeding us this crap for their own convenience.”
Too often, those criticisms are true.
I’d far rather teach the kids, “Hm. These old people are crusty and petrified between the ears, sure, but they do seem to know some things. Best to listen to them before making any decisions, here,” and the only way I know of to DO that is to tell them the truth, as best we know it. Provide them with the information! Tell them what we know! Sure, ethics, morality, even religion, should be a part of that… and, certainly, there are forms of sexual information I’d agree the kids don’t need. Pretty much every issue of Hustler ever printed, for example.
It’s one of the most important things we ever learn, folks. It’s durn near the graduate course in how to be a human, right there. Why do we still allow our kids to pick it up in alleys, on playgrounds, and on the uglier side of the internet?
I want to thank Master Wang-Ka for this thread, because after reading his story and all the replies and giving it some thought, I’ve come to realize something. When it comes to human sexuality,I was clueless as a teen, but at least I knew it. I understood the mechanics perfectly well, because I was blessed with parents who were forthright about the subject and made sure I understood, because that was the best way to keep me safe. That’s good and all, but I never had a date in high school. I just never tried, because I could never understand what was in it for the girls.
From my point of view, guys are ugly, hairy, smelly, and brutish. I concluded, therefore, that since I’m a guy I must also be ugly, hairy, smelly, and brutish, and thus completely unattractive. I never even tried to get a date because it just seemed futile. I couldn’t find anything attractive about boys, so I just figured no one could, so it was just a lost cause and there was no point in trying.
I know this sounds ridiculous, but I was in my mid-twenties before I fully accepted the idea that at least some women would find me attractive. Actually, I’m lying, I don’t think I’ve ever fully accepted that. It’s just that I started to become aware of the possibility when I was in my twenties. Which leads back to my new awareness:
I’m in my mid-thirties now, and I’m still clueless.
Deep down, I don’t understand why women aren’t all lesbians. Women are beautiful. Women are sexy. Women are fascinating. I don’t even have a “type;” I like 'em all. Tall, short, fat, scrawny, smart, dumb (okay, maybe not dumb), frivolous, serious – doesn’t matter. My only criteria are “human,” “female,” and “having a detectable pulse.” If you meet those minimum requirements, I want you. It’s always been that way, and I suspect it always will be. The only thing that’s changed as I’ve gotten older is the acceptable age range. It’s currently late-twenties to early-fifties, and I’m more flexible on the high end. I just think women are wonderful.
Guys are a different story altogether. Men are disgusting, and I’m still amazed that anybody would want to touch one. Intellectually, I know that’s not true, but I still have trouble internalizing it. “Trouble” hell, I just can’t do it. See, I’m still lying to myself. To this day I only have one sure-fire method for figuring out whether or not a woman is hitting on me: I look at my girlfriend to see if she’s getting irritated.
I’m messed up.
You sweet-talker, you! 
My mother, as I think back on it, was really uncomfortable having The Talk with me (age 11-ish). So I was embarrassed about the whole thing, too. I recall her saying something about blood and babies, and she showed me how to install a sanitary napkin on the belt (waaaaay back before maxi-pads with wings), then she said I didn’t need to be worried about having a boyfriend till I was in high school. To my mind, that translated to “Don’t even think about boys till high school”, so I was suddenly made more shy than I was already. Naturally, come high school, I had no idea how to interact with boys… And as for knowing how the whole man-woman thing worked, she didn’t address that at all. Nor did sex ed classes. I figured it out eventually, but I wish I’d been armed with the correct information from the start.
My kid was. I hope I’ve told her what she needs to know.
Amen t’ both’a’ya.
The mechanics of sex was the easy part. With sufficient savvy and effort, you can obtain the necessary information.
The reason I wanted Playboy, believe it or not, was not for the pictures. I wanted to know what to say, what to do, how to act. Every source I tapped simply said, “Be yourself,” while reality, in my face, was telling me otherwise.
Why do girls say they want nice guys, and then go out with bad boys? Beats me. Or at least it did then.
I was still workin’ on the issue in my early twenties, when I discovered older women. I liked women my own age just fine, but the older ones were refreshingly candid, tended to be smarter, had their heads on straight, and were generally less inclined to play mind games. They knew who they were and what they wanted. My “older women” phase lasted quite some time, simply because I tended to have better relationships with older women than I did with my own age group.
In fact, a gang of my old college buddies voted me “Most Likely To Quit Working And Make A Living As Some Old Broad’s Boy Toy.”
Why? Older women made more sense. That’s all, really. But it mattered a great deal to ME.
Makes me wish more than anything that I could get into a time machine, go back, and hand a teenage me the manual. “Yeah, this is how women tend to think between ages twelve and eighteen or so… yeah, and then they get REAL weird around nineteen to twenty-two, but that’s also when they’re the wildest, really… yeah, and then they go through the twentysomethings phase… and then, around thirty or so, they start gettin’ REAL hot again, but this time without all the nonsense…”
sigh
You mean it still doesn’t? Can you enlighten us? Or, well, me?
The only thing I still want to know is…what does “chasing the elephant” mean?
I’m serious!
(ok, well, I still haven’t worked out the whole “sex” thing yet, but I think I can figure most of it out on my own.)
To this day, I’m not certain 100% what “looking for the elephant” meant. From context, I deduced that it meant “out getting spifflicated,” i.e., drunk. Perhaps the usage is borrowed from “pink elephants.”
As to nice guys… well… experience taught me that women – particularly younger women – like “nice guys” to have around as friends, kill roaches, and barbecue. They often prefer “bad boys,” however, as romantic partners, due to the danger factor inherent in the relationship. Bad boys are generally more spontaneous and exciting than “nice guys.”
On the other hand, nice guys don’t generally beat the crap out of you and run up your credit cards, either.
The Italians have a saying, “Woman should be a nun in public, and a savage whore in bed.”
A corollary to this, a woman once told me, is that “Man should be a church-going respectable businessman in public, and a crazed horny outlaw biker in bed. ONLY in bed, in fact.”
Given a few years experience, I think I can see her point…
Hm.
You know, looking at that last post, it suddenly occurs to me why I had such great luck with thirtysomething women when I was in my early twenties.
From their point of view, I WAS a “bad boy…”
At last, something I can contribute!
“Seeing the elephant” has two meanings. During the Civil War, it meant the first time a soldier sees battle (which, you can imagine, can be quite a shock, if you survive).
But it may have appeared earlier to refer to the 49ers going off to California during the gold rush. So “seeing the elephant” meant going off on a grand adventure.
I’m familiar with the second meaning. Never heard of the first, but I’ll gladly take your word for it.
…but given the context, “…looking for the Elephant again, in the bottom of a glass of Pisco punch,” it could be that “looking for adventure” in the bottom of a glass of something-or-other could have the same meaning.
I never have been able to find out what Pisco punch, was, though. Anyone know THAT one?
Well, the obvious candidate for that would be Pisco, a liquor from South America, primarily Chile and Peru. I’ve had only the latter, provided by a Peruvian associate of my wife’s. He said the Chilean version was sweeter, which is interesting, because the one he gave me was like a punch in the face with a fist made of rocket fuel. More info here, including a link at the bottom to the recipe for the rather famous Pisco Sour. Pisco Punch could be a slang term for it, or a similar drink.