May 1 9 6 6

A Text for the Tenth Grade.”, by i ale when all the other men ~ – are- … — – —

Dr. Mosely Butts, Professor of Gin building up nerve to make a pass at Yale. at the accordion player’s wife? Is “Just as I thought,” cried Bill, that what you want to be – a social smelling his son’s breath, “you hav- misfit?” en’t been drinking again!” “You want to go to Harvard, “Gee whiz, Dad. Don’t you know don’t you?” Nora asks, with a mothanything about vodka? It’s what er’s kindness. you’re supposed to drink when you “Well, sure, Mom. Harvard’s the don’t want to smell like you’ve been key to the great expense account drinking. I knocked back a vodka jobs, I guess.” “How do you expect to get in with a D in beer and light wines?” Nora asks. “You’ve simply got to Observer : drink harder, Neil. Competition for the good colleges is harder than it was in your father’s day. It’s not enough any more iust to cheat. Bad News for the Old Booze School ~owada~s you’ve got to know how and orange juice as soon as I got to mix bourbon and champagne and home, the way successful executives find a hangover powder that will by Russell Baker do when they don’t want people to have you back on your toes for an know they’ve started drinking in the 8:00 A.M. class.” middle of the afternoon.” “Neil,” says Bill, “you’ve got to “Don’t lie to your father, Neil.” get your mind out of Elizabethan Nora says. “We bought you a whole poetry and into the bottle or you’re and Nora Jones, typical American D R. MORRIS CHAFETZ, a Harvard psychiatrist, proposed the parents. Social drinking technique, known to American students everyother day that since “alcohol is here case of vodka last fall when school going to wind up culturally destatred and you haven’t even opened prived, maladjusted and unable to it yet.” impress the boss with the way you to stay” we should try to develop awhere as “boozology” has been Neil sulks, then whines. “I don’t handle a brandy snifter after dinner. firmly embedded in the national healthy attitude toward it by teach- see why we have to learn drinking, Now get on that homework. What ing social drinking in the schools.educational curriculum for fifteen anyhow. What good’s it going to do are you studying tonight?” It would be a good idea, the doctoryears. In the Jones household it is me when I get out of school? Why “The new martini.” the homework hour. said, for students to begin “practice don’t they teach something useful, “Fascinating. Your mother used drinking” in elementary school and The Jones’s son, Neil, is sprawled like income tax evasion?” to call the martini ‘the quick blow to continue through collcge. on the sofa reading “King Lear.” As “Listen, son,” says Bill, “do you the back of the neck.’ Now get in We take you now to the year his mother and father enter, he want to grow up and not know how there and mix up a batch and see guiltily shoves the book under the 1985. The scene is the home of Bill to make a fool of yourself at the how many it takes to make you see @ 1966 by The New York Times Corncushions and takes up his copy of office party? Do you want to be one double.” pany. Reprinted by permission. “The Theory of the Third Martini: of those creeps who stand around As usual, Neil starts, but cannot at cocktail parties drinking ginger get the hang of it and has to ask

for help. “It’s easy,” says Bill. years ago. You see, a martini is “Look: ten parts gin, one part of really nothing more than the interwhite vermouth. Frost the pitcher section of a set of ice cubes, gin, and the glass, then fill the pitcher vermouth -” with ice. Stir seven times.” Bill groans in despair. He knows “But that’s the old way, Dad,” that to help Neil get into Harvard says Neil. “Miss Simpson says peo- he will have to start all over again ple who made martinis the old way to relearn the martini. On his fifth have got a powerful knockout blow, attempt he is in deep distress. Nora but didn’t really understand what and Neil, between them, finally sucthey were doing. ceed in getting him undressed and “The idea behind the new martini into bed. is to help the student understand the “Sh great thing, social-drinking subject. Miss Simpson says parents course,” he tells Nora as the lights ought to understand that because go out. “Gives you a whole new it’s the same principle that went into outlook on doing the children’s teaching ‘the new math’ twenty homework.”