Robert Heinlein - Expanded Universe

This campus never has riots. The girls are not "on the Pill." (Or if they are, the subject is not mentioned.) There is no drug problem. In short, I have described college life of a bygone day.

But don't misunderstand me. My teens were the Torrid Twenties and exactly the same things went on then as now.. . but were kept under cover. When I was a freshman in college, the nearest connection for marijuana was a drugstore a hundred yards off campus; for H or C it was necessary to walk another block. But bootleg liquor (tax-free) would be delivered on or off campus at any hour.

Did I avail myself of any of these amenities? None of your business, Buster!

As for sex, each generation thinks it invented sex,' each generation is totally mistaken. Anything along that line today was commonplace both in Pompeii and in Victorian England, the differences lie only in the degree of covering up - if any.

I may never publish the book MEN ARE EXASPERATING; I'm not sure it has a market and, at my age, there are more stories that I want to write (and are certain of publication) than I can possibly write before the black camel kneels at my door.

I hope you like Puddin'.

According to Daddy, I'll eat anything standing still or even moving slowly. But Mother said nonsense, I simply have a high metabolic rate.

Daddy answered, "You haven't had it checked, so how do you know? Puddin', stand sideways and let me look at you."

Junior said, "She hasn't got a 'sideways,' " and let loose a perfectly horrible laugh that is supposed to sound like Woody Woodpecker and does, only worse. Of what use is the male of the species between the ages of two and sixteen? Later on, they are bearable, even indispensable - at least I would find it difficult to dispense with Cliff, although Junior may never be an asset.

That's how I went on a diet.

It started with Cliff - most things do. I am going to marry Cliff, only I haven't told him yet. I have never had any cause to doubt the sincerity of Cliff's devotion, but I have sometimes wondered what it was he found most attractive about me: my character, disposition, and true worth, or my so - to - speak physical attributes.

The bathroom scales were beginning to make me think it was the former. Perhaps that should have made me happy, but I have yet to find the girl who would swap a twenty - one - inch waist and a good silhouette for sterling merit. Not that I could hope to be

a raving beauty, but a few wolf whistles never did any harm and are good for the morale.'

I had just had a chance to test Cliff's point of view. A girl showed up at school who was exactly my size; we compared measurements. The point is, on Clarice it looked good - cursive and bountiful but good. Maureen, I told myself, here is a chance to get an honest opinion out of Cliff.

I saw to it that he got a good look at her at tennis practice. As we left I said craftily, "That new girl, Clarice - she has a lovely figure."

Cliff looked over his shoulder and replied. "Oh, sure - from her ankles down."

I had my answer and I didn't like it. Cliff didn't care for my type of figure; divorced from my personality it did not appeal to him. I should have felt a warm glow, knowing it for true love. I didn't; I felt terrible.

It was when I refused a second helping of potatoes that evening that the subject of my metabolism came up.

I went to the library next day and looked into this matter of diet. I hadn't known there were so many books about it. Finally I found one that made sense:

Eat and Grow Slender. That struck me as an excellent idea.

I took it home to study. I got a few crackers and some cheese and ate them absent - mindedly while I thumbed through the book. There was a plan for losing ten pounds in ten days; the menus looked pretty skimpy. There was another for losing ten pounds in a month. That's for me, I said; no need to be fanatic.

There was a chapter about calories. They make it so simple: one ice - cream cone, one hundred and fifty calories; three dates, eighty - four calories.

My eye lit on "soda crackers"; I knew they wouldn't count much and they didn't - only twenty - one calories apiece. Then I looked up "cheese."

Arithmetic stirred in my brain and I had a chilly feeling. I went into Daddy's study and used his postal scale to weigh the cheese that had not already become Maureen.

I did the arithmetic three times. Including two little bits of fudge I had eaten six hundred and seventy calories, more than half of a day's allowance given in the reducing diet! And I had only meant to stay the pangs until dinnertime.

Maureen, I said, this time you've got to be a fanatic; it's the ten - day die - trying diet for you.

I planned to keep my affairs to myself, selecting the diet from what was placed before me, but such a course is impossible in a family that combines the worst aspects of a Senate investigation with the less brutal methods of a third degree. I got away with passing up the cream - of - tomato soup by being a little bit late, but when I refused the gravy, there was nothing to do but show them the book.

Mother said a growing girl needed her food. I pointed out that I had quit growing vertically and it was time I quit horizontally. Junior opened his mouth and I stuffed a roll into it. That gave Daddy a chance to say, "Let's put it up to Doc Andrews. If he gives her the green light, she can starve herself gaunt. She's a free agent."

So Daddy and I went to Doctor Andrews' office next day. Daddy had an appointment anyhow - he has terrible colds every spring. Doctor Andrews sent Daddy across the hall to Doctor Grieb who specializes in allergies and things, then he saw me.

I've known Doctor Andrews since my first squawk, so I told him everything, even about Cliff, and showed him the book. He thumbed through it, then he weighed me and listened to my heart and took my blood pressure. "Go ahead," he told me, "but make it the thirty day diet. I don't want you fainting in the classroom."

I guess I had counted on him to save me from my will power. "How about exercise?" I said hopefully. "I'm pretty active. Won't I need to eat more to offset it?"

He roared. "Honey child," he said, "do you know how far you would have to hike to burn up one chocolate malt? Eight miles! It will help, but not much."

"How long do I keep this up?" - I asked faintly.

"Until you reach the weight you want - or until your character plays out."

I marched out with my jaw set. If a girl doesn't have a figure or character either, what has she got left?

Mother was home when we got there. Daddy picked her up and kissed her and said, "Now you've got two of us on diets!"

"Two?" said Mother.

"Look." Daddy peeled off his shirt. His arms were covered with little red pin pricks, some redder than others, arranged in neat rows. "I'm allergic," he announced proudly. "Those aren't real colds. I'm allergic to practically everything. That one" - he pointed to a red welt - "is bananas. That one is corn. That one is cow's milk protein. And there is pollen in honey. Wait." He hauled out a list: "Rhubarb, tapioca, asparagus, lima beans, coconut, mustard, cow's milk, apricot, beets, carrots, lamb, cottonseed oil, lettuce, oysters, chocolate - here, you read it; it's your problem.

"It's a good thing that I went to the campus today and signed up for an evening class in domestic dietetics. From now on this family is going to be fed scientifically," Mother said.

That should have been the worst of it, but it wasn't. Junior announced that he was training for hockey and he had to have a training - table diet - which to him meant beef, dripping with blood, whole - wheat toast, and practically nothing else. Last season he had discovered that, even with lead weights in his pockets, he didn't have what it took for a body check. Next season he planned to be something between Paul Bunyan and Gorgeous George. Hence the diet.