Over the summer my wife and I tend to get to spend more time together and today we took a long drive which is often the place where I get to apply some of my thoughts on how things are to real life. On the drive home we passed a building in a serious state of disrepair. It used to be a "gentleman's club" which prominently displayed its wares on it's billboard like front, until some of the more morally minded in the local community took up arms over the somewhat audacious displays. Personally I had no objection to the long limbed figures depicted in spike heels (the place called itself "High Heels" as I recall) or the other sometimes quite frank images of the "hostesses" within. But a colleague of my wife's had objected. A single mother, she is raising her boys alone and she felt it was inappropriate for them to be exposed to such images when, driving by with her, they couldn't help but notice. So she joined a petition drive to shut High Heels down and, in time, they succeeded. The result, now, is a derelict building without occupant or purpose. But no more scantily clad gals displayed to the driving public either.

I made this point to my wife and noted that I kind of missed the images. After all, at least from my perspective they were not entirely unpleasant to look at. More importantly, they were nicer to look at than the now decrepit structure that met our eyes as we drove past this afternoon. My wife snarled at me that it was inappropriate and that I shouldn't have been looking at those images either. After all, would I want my daughters or granddaughters to parade about like that? If I wouldn't, she declared, then why would I want other men's daughters to be doing that?

I said, hold on a minute. Everyone is somebody's son or daughter, aren't they and some people do things like that. Why should their being someone's daughter matter if they wanted to do it? It's a free country, after all, I added, and no one was forcing these young ladies to engage in such activities. That didn't assuage my wife's annoyance though. So I tried another tack. . . .