Love Under a Cloud

At the most recent Goodwill trip, Erin and I managed to get there ten minutes before closing, which meant that I had to go into super-bargain-hunting mode. Among the other treasures I found was a book called Facts of Life and Love for Teen-Agers. This is a very, very amusing book from 1956 that has tips for those in the awkward years. Here are a few favorites:

"In a poll of high-school boys, more than two-thirds said that they do not like to have girls call them on the telephone. They feel that this is a boy's privilege, and that a girl seems forward when she phones a boy."

"Girls often knit their boy friends socks or mittens or ties or scarves or even sweaters that express their devotion fittingly"

"People are often troubled by attachments to members of the same sex. A general feeling exists that there is something not quite right about a girl's crush on another girl, or a boy's attachment to another boy."

"A boy in the Midwest fixed up his garage as a gambling casino and had a crowd of boys and girls in for 'A Night of Sin', with quantities of stage money for stakes and a jug of cider for the liquid refreshment"

"You need not feel that you are a failure because you once pulled some boner in public"

Survey of teenage boys:

"I like a girl who acts like a girl and not a tomboy"

"I like a girl who doesn't hang around with a bunch of boys or tough girls"

"I would like her to be of average intelligence"

Oh, that book is amazingly insightful. I hate my girlfriends to be of any higher than average intelligence. It throws off my groove.


Here's a good picture (albeit a bit fuzzy) of one of the mice: