QUERY: This one's gonna be fun...

[Joe Pickett]

<<We recently quizzed my 11-year -old son on this baseball metaphor, which he
used
in describing the behavior of some of his more precocious classmates.

To him, first base meant petting; second base meant "fingering," although he
wasn't quite sure what this meant.

I've forgotten exactly how third and home play out in his diamond (I'll ask him
again).

But apparently Tom Wolfe is correct--there has been a shift on the bases, at
least since I was a teenager in the 1960s, when getting to first base meant
kissing.  Now people are kissing in the batter's box.>>


A follow-up to this reconfiguration of the diamond.  My wife has helped me fill
in the picture some.

In my son's middle school, third base is "Dry sex," and home is sex.

So if I understand my son correctly, it's 1) Petting (presumably outside the
clothes), 2 "Fingering" (feeling underneath the clothes?), 3) "Dry Sex" , and 4)
Sex.

These terms are subject to some interpretation, however, and since my son's
grasp of this subject is somewhat tenuous, so is mine.

My wife thought that his first base was still kissing, and that he was
conflating or confusing "fingering" with "feeling up" in general.  My
recollection of the conversation was a little different.

If anyone has the Tom Wolfe reference, I would appreciate it.


Joe