Just for you: a chapter from a book in progress. You can buy a copy of the whole book, right now, in PDF format, or, if you like, as a paperback. See the collected chapters so far, FREE online at If You’d Asked Me… For details, visit our home page or send a request through our Contact form.

To follow the progress online, click on the little orange icon beside the P&S Press feed, over there in the right-hand sidebar. ⇒ ⇒ ⇒

SECTION 1, Continued:
God Is Great, Beer Is Good, and People Are Crazy

17. If you had a 16-year-old daughter and accidentally knocked over her purse one evening while she was asleep, how upset on a scale of 1 to 10 (increasing) would you be to find each of the seven worrisome items in the detail below?

Condom: meh! Zero . . . be glad she has enough sense to protect herself.

Loaded gun: 10/10. What is going on in her life that she feels the need to protect herself that way? Or is she planning to stick up the local branch of Wells Fargo??

Heroin fixings: 10/10. Full-blown horror show under way.

Half-full pint of vodka: 8/10. Who gave it to her, where did she consume the first half of the pint, and was she in a car at the time?

Cigs: 9/10. There are better ways to commit suicide; cf. the gun. Is she trying to harm herself? Definitely would seek medical or psychiatric help for a kid who had a nicotine addiction.

Positive pregnancy test: 10/10. Who is the sire, does he know about this, what kind of complications is THAT going to cause, and what does she intend to do about the pregnancy? This could get expensive on top of all the drama.

Ticket to a naughty movie: meh! Sixteen-year-olds are not what they used to be. Your 16-year-old is a lot more sophisticated sexually than you were at that age and way more so than I was. It won’t harm her to learn the facts of life. Just be sure she knows the difference between fantasy and reality.