IF YOU HAD ONLY ONE GLOVE WOULD YOU KEEP IT ON YOUR PERSON AS A GAUGE IN CASE YOU WERE CHALLENGED TO A DUEL?

If you lost one of your medium-favorite gloves and had the choice of throwing the glove away, using it in the kitchen as an oven mitt, or keeping it on your person as a gauge in case you were challenged to a duel, what would you do?

If your impulse is to keep the glove on your person in case the need should arise either to challenge or accept another gentleman’s provocation to meet in armed combat over a real or imagined slight, possibly spilling wine on someone’s bonnet or lace-bound shoe at a tête-à-tête or dancing with the wrong person’s fiancée, you may be suffering from what is known as Schloschembarker’s Syndrome, also known as Acute Gauge Anxiety (AGA).

WHAT ARE THE SYMPTOMS OF ACUTE GAUGE ANXIETY

Common symptoms of AGA include cotton mouth, chest pain, fever, outbreaks of hideous boils, shortness of breath, bleeding from the eyes and nose, headache, sore throat, back pain, abdominal pain, indigestion, heartburn, nausea, vomiting, tendency to bruise, tendency to exit carriage while in motion, swelling of the joints, and turpitude.

Turpitude is vileness, as in you feel like a big fat toad and everywhere you go you leave a trail of scum behind you.

IS THERE A CURE

The only known cure, aside from the treatment of individual symptoms, is to carry a gauge around with you everywhere, even to the beach. A gauge may in fact be your mismatched glove, or a mitten, or even a favorite hanky. The important thing is to alleviate the anxiety of being caught gaugeless by always having something at the ready to toss during a challenge.

Foto de Joshua Reddekopp en Unsplash