Dear Ann Landers,
I nearly dropped my eyeglasses in the coffee when I read your advice to the forty-year-old woman who had just learned she was pregnant. You said she should be thrilled yet. Have you lost your mind? The poor thing told you she has a married daughter and a son in college. And now she is going to start in again with diapers, whooping cough shots, sitters-the whole bit. What's more she is destined to be a lifelong member of PTA. I was forty when my last child was bom. When the fifteenth person told me how happy I should be, I told her to put that show on the road. It was interesting that no woman with a child under twelve years of age opened up a mouth-only the dames who had had hysterectomies. I wasn't happy then and I'm not happy now. The boy is three years old and driving me around the bend. Yesterday a woman on the bus asked me what my grandson's name was and I got so mad I said, He is not my grandson, he's my little brother. I am helping out my mother for the day. So please stop telling forty-year-old women they should be thrilled about having a baby. You haven't had a baby in twenty-eight years and your memory is short. I am living for the day I can put 165 this holy terror in school and get off tranquilizers and back on food.-A Basket Case Dear Case: Your letter sounds as if it were written at the end of a miserable day. Write to me after you've had a good night's sleep-in about four years. 166 TWELVE YOU CAN'T MAKE A SILK PURSE QoA. cjptaftl me tHe ta accept fjie t&imjpA 3 camiat cRartgc-
Dear rlnn Landers,
My wife and I have been married twelve years. She still undresses at night in the clothes closet with the lights turned off. I mentioned this casually because I didn't want to make an issue of it. She became upset and said I was a sex maniac. That was five years ago, and I haven't brought it up since. We have two children and are happily married. I have no other complaints. If you can tell me why my wife be-haves this way, I will find it easier to accept.-Black Out Dear Black Out: A woman who must hide from her hus- 167 band while undressing (for twelve years yet) has some warped ideas which were undoubtedly drummed into her when she was a child. In an effort to teach their children modesty parents sometimes give the impression that there is something evil about the body. These children grow up ashamed and inhibited. They feel they must hide that which is evil, and darkness is best for hiding.

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