I was a teenager during the Depression. In that time all of us teenagers were programmed by such practices as hanging maybaskets. Boys hung maybaskets at a girl’s door and when she came out to pick them up, she was chased and kissed. That was the way it was done. Or, another game was played — it was called “Post office.” When someone went to pick up mail, he or she was kissed.

Today, in the world of dungarees, female three-star generals and frontline 1st sergeants, truck drivers, pilots, police and such, all formerly male preserves now occupied by women, the rules have changed. The language of that pre-World War II era has become the profanity, in a very real way, of today.

Let me be clear here. I abhor the misuse of power, as did Thomas Jefferson, and with the same passionate intensity. I’m OK with declaring that a capital offense. So I’m not questioning that #MeToo movement. I’m just worrying about the spillover.

My worry is that the war against the unnatural may get out of hand and criminalize the natural. I tend to ask pretty girls, “What is your attitude toward older men?” or “Let’s you and I fly to some Greek Island for a vacation.” Am I to be taken to task for that? Am I in violation of a new taboo?

The movie “Salome, How She Danced” has rows of guys falling off walls as a pretty girl walked by. She was a knockout. I can almost remember the name of the star. Would Hollywood even think of scripting such a theme today?

(I just remembered: It was Yvonne DeCarlo.)

Victor Lister

Athens