Pakku's Wisdom
Once a year, after the boys had proved themselves men with their iceberg dodging, they were gathered up, and left alone in a room with Pakku.
No one was quite sure how the tradition started – possibly as a cruel joke after Pakku's fiancé left him, or maybe because he wanted to make everyone else as miserable as himself, but it was inescapable. You become a man; you meet with Pakku in that dark, despair-soaked room.
For the first five minutes, there would be only silence. Nervous by the overheard whispering of the men who had come before them, made even more uneasy by the unopened box that sat forbiddingly in one corner, the boys would start to sweat. Pakku would look at the men-boys, and they would stare back at him, eyes wide. The scene was set, and the play began.
"You have probably noticed that you males are different from the females." He would start bluntly. Before Katara had charged into their home and thrown everything upside-down, he would have said "You learn attack waterbending, they learn healing." But instead, now he got right to the point. He opened The Box.
Within the first ten minutes at least one lad would pass out. It was a personal record that Pakku prided himself on.
"And as you can see," he said, playing with a small pair of panties, "they are incredibly elastic, and so it is a simple matter for an enterprising man to push them aside, or pull them off. Unfortunately, not all articles of women's clothing are so accommodating, and so many men have expressed a particular affection for the helpful panties. In fact, some men pride themselves of their collection of women's underwear, taking one from every woman they sleep with. Needless to say, this is discouraged by the women. It is recommended that if you take her underwear, not only do you warn her in advance, but buy her a replacement pair."
His detailed descriptions of how to relieve a woman of her clothing, in all states of consciousness, were enough to make most men keep their wives far away from him. His telling of the different kinds of diseases a man could pick up from careless sex, and horrific accounts of what frostbite could do to a man's equipment usually got the biggest reaction, but his helpful hints of how waterbending could be used to heighten pleasure always ensured an increase in the number of attendees in his classes.
And then he would dig further into The Box, and bring out the diagrams.
At the end of it all, with their mistress moon high in the sky, the males would stagger from the room: boys no longer, but now, in the eyes of their peers, true men.