A Teachable Moment?

So I’m reading Huck Finn with my students today and we come to one of the chapters with the King and the Duke in which they have created a playbill at the bottom of which it  reads: “LADIES AND CHILDREN NOT ADMITTED”

So I ask the students if they can tell me what that statement implies and someone says that whatever they’re showing is going to be dirty, have nudity or whatever. And so I ask, and if the men in the town think that the show is going to be “dirty” like that what do the King and the Duke expect them to do? (The answer I’m going for, of course, is that all the men will show up for the performance and fill the theatre). At this point one of the boys in the front row raises his hand and says (in all seriousness): “Fondle themselves.”

Yes, that’s right people. “Fondle themselves.”