Quirks of the Cosmos Thursday: So Keirkegaard says to the Prude...

The Prude in an existentialistish mood.

What makes a prude? Nature? Nurture? Free will? Determinism? Are there clues from the past?

In 8^th grade and already a cheerleader with prudish tendencies, The Prude got together with some of her cheerleader girlfriends.

It was one of those October evenings that generate a wild-oat-sowing mood in Junior High girls.

They decided they would

Raise Some Ruckus.

So they took rolls of  toilet paper- Scotts- and went after dark to a rival school.

There they spent an hour trying to toss the rolls of TP high enough to catch the branches of the old oak trees that surrounded the schoolyard.

Mostly the rolls missed the target branches by several feet and whizzed back down onto Prude & Company’s respective heads.

But the plucky cheerleaders were not to be denied their ruckus. The ended up T-P- ing the chain link fence, the bushes, and several 10 ft. saplings.

Then the unthinkable happened.

The Prude’s Cheerleader Squad got caught, Scott-tissue-handed, by some members of the 

Rival School’s Cheerleader Squad. 

The leader of this gang followed the PCS around, expressing shock and horror at the horrifically shocking damage and threatening long prison sentences and removal from the Sisterhood of 8^th Grade Cheerleaders.

Let The Prude assure you, there is no one so vicious as an 8^th grade cheerleader on a rant. Especially one who professes that she is personally related to the Chief of Police. (in a sad side note, The Prude later discovered that Miss Rival Cheerleader LIED. She didn’t even know the police chief)

The Prude’s other cheerleading friends scoffed and laughed and dared the rival squad to do anything. They turned to The Prude to tell her they were going back- The Partridge Family was about to begin.

But Conscience-Stricken Prude, certain that she had brought shame on her school, her family, and the Upper Midwest, and would spend the rest of Junior High rotting in jail,

was frantically pulling Scotts from bushes and chain link fencing and doing her best to shimmy up saplings.

In consequence of her decision, she missed David Cassidy’s antics, had raw spots on her knees and elbows and developed a decades-long aversion to Scotts toilet paper.

What would Kierkegaard make of that?