If pscyhogenic amnesia, protecting your brain from painful memories, does not prevent you from recalling our last column, you will remember that we discussed a number of strange species of being which inhabited the postcard world at the turn of the last century. Led by the Kewpies, there were numerous different kinds of smallish people who looked like children but went about adult occupations, expressing grown-up opinions, frequently in a clothing-optional manner. (Obviously, the example above needs to be wearing athletic equipment so you know he’s a baseball player, because otherwise being hit by the pitcher…you got that one? Okay, we’ll move on.)
At the end of the article I hinted that these strange, small people did not disappear at the time of World War I, when, for example, the nation of postcard Dutch children either retired or became very scarce. (I’m not sure these count as a separate species of being, like the kewpies, since occasionally they DO act like human children. I will wait for some anthropologist to help me out with this.)
In fact, whole new races of people with childlike bodies but adult faces and minds move into the postcard world, now more frequently clothed, but a little casual about dress, like this gentleman coming home from a long vacation.
If the fact that he went on vacation all by himself and had to hitch a ride home does not convince you that this childlike being was, in fact, simply an adult of different shape, the fact that he joined the Army when World War II broke out ought to help.
In fact, quite a lot of this beings served during the war, and, when on leave, conducted themselves just like their human counterparts.
They were the same in peacetime, enjoying their vacations. (Yes, this may LOOK like a child, but from the background, she’s apparently WAY out past where the children should be tubing.)
They were just like us, worrying about their fitness.
And showing off their fitness.
In fact, they loved the camera, probably the reason they show up on so many cards.
And they were just as nonchalant about clothing as their counterparts from the 1910s.
Occasionally making use of a convenient banner
But more often associating nudity with mischief.
In fact, the major difference between these species of Kewpiekind is that although the species of beings who inhabited the cards of the previous generation seemed to go about adult tasks in a state of perpetual chidlikeness, these postcard folk seemed to go about it in a perpetual adolescence, aware of their nudity and flaunting it before more mundane humans. What influence this had on human teens of the Sixties and Seventies has yet to be ionvestigated.
(You DO realize what she’s doing, don’t you? Yeah, she’s mooning the sun.)
Blogsy Babbles 