Before we get into the finer points of how to brandish the prude version of a battering ram, let’s take a little side street to visit some personal Tuesday Prude history. We’ll pull back the curtain of personal and familial past and discover why we here have chosen not to engage in fisticuffs to defend and promote our belief system.

When offspring of the Tuesday Prude were small, and driven to various manifestations of their original sin,  the first disciplinary inclination would be to patch their pookets.
According to the Prude Lexicon:
Patchin’ (verb): Application of corporal punishment to a fleshy area of a youngster’s backside.
“If you run into the street again you will get a patchin’ on your pooket.”
Pooket (noun): The well-padded backside of a child. The part of the anatomy required for sitting.
“Of course your pooket hurts. You jumped off the swing and landed on it.”

Although not opposed to corporal punishment, we here at The Tuesday Prude tired of nursing  stinging hands after each patchin’ whilst Prudlings  chuckled and announced that their rock-like pookets hadn’t even FELT the patchin.

A little further back in history reveals where we began to develop our passive-aggressive battering ram.  One particular mother of one particular Prude was an advocate of patchins.  This Prude’s father infinitely preferred The Lecture. (sneak preview-The Lecture IS a prude’s most potent weapon). Perhaps he, also, was a victim of delicate palms.  This particular Prude was only in the embryonic stage of prudish development, and often exhibited infestations of original sin. Her father would sit her down, look her in the eye, and explain in five-to-ten thousand words why that particular sin was wrong. He would add details regarding to whom the wrong was done and their consequent sadness, the sadness of the young Prude’s parents, pastor and the Lord, and why continuation in this sin would only lead to bigger, deeper, stronger, and more serious lectures.

This Prude’s mother, unable to take any more, would exclaim in exasperation: ‘Give her a patchin’ for Pete’s sake and get it over with!”  The Prude heartily concurred.  But her father, determined not to skimp on discipline, and preferring passive-aggressive to physical, would bring the lecture to its full development, complete with a summary paragraph and restatement of his thesis.

The Tuesday Prude has been impressed by the Power of the Lecture. We are only beginning to learn how potent, how life-changing, and how naughtiness-overcoming it can be when wielded correctly.
Please, we beg you, if you haven’t been trained in the use of this weapon, don’t go ramming it willy-nilly! The chance for irreparable harm is great.
Come back next week please. You’ll enter a novice and leave a proud, card-carrying Lecturer.