There are times in any given day when my mind just wanders and I enter an altered state. Sometimes it’s on purpose as I look to figure out a wordplay for a Dad Joke, but other times it’s a subtle sliding into this place where things aren’t quite sure, like slip-sliding on a frozen pond. Then it’s anyone’s guess as to what’s going to come out of it. I frequently don’t have a clue.

Today was one of those latter sliding experiences – I was trying to come up with some words to put in a pun about softball, and had words like second base, struck out, curveball, and my mind fixed on the game of baseball, supposedly the grand national pastime.

My thoughts then went on a mind bender to a time when I was a very young teenager and chemicals I didn’t understand were raising havoc with my interior, and a subject that one didn’t speak out loud much thundered through my mind like a herd of buffalos. Sex. I remember hearing somewhere someone likened it as a metaphor to the game of baseball – On the surface it was simple and elegant and quite easily understandable, and was sort of code for the act of sexual interplay between two individuals.

It went like this: In facing the pitcher the batter has one initial goal, to get a hit. If one gets to first base, that’s anything involved above the neck. If one hits a double and gets to second base, that’s anything involved below the neck. A major hit that gets one around the bases to third base, is anything doing with below the waist.  And of course, a home run is the ultimate action, intercourse.

It was always whispered, or spoken in low tones, and often used as a metaphor in a joking manner, and one never spoke those words with a girl. I’m sure girls knew the terms as well as the boys did, and who knows what they thought of that wordplay, but in hindsight it was abusive and dismissive of women – It was wisdom never to have asked.

Is this familiar to anyone else…?