Cigarettes come with a Surgeon General’s warning on the carton. There is a disclaimer at the end of every Cialis ad. The honorable Miller, Budweiser, and Absolut Vodka companies remind us to only drink responsibly. But men, look into your closets. Pull out the Polo. Unleash the Lacoste. Even bust out the Eddie Bauer. Now look at the tags. 100% cotton. Made in (insert country with no child labor laws). Have the butler fill the washing machine with Evian. That’s it; no more advice. Nevertheless, where is the warning? Where are the safe use instructions? My fellow consumers, where is the nationwide outrage about the potentially hazardous overdose of the collar pop?

Collar pops lasting more than three hours (known as Collara in medical circles), though rare in the general population, are simply not safe. Now, it’s understandable why this is not an issue as globally serious as, say, whether the girl Kobe boned really wanted to be boned. Yet within the confines of Princeton, Collara is a serious problem, and with a cure twenty years or more in the future, all McCosh will do is send you hiking back to Forbes with a cold compress on your clavicle. It makes one wonder if our smug Ivy-clad isolation is, in reality, a CDC-imposed quarantine a la Outbreak. You’d think Ralph Nader, America’s more-than-slightly-daft grandfather, would have at least published an expose by this late stage of the game: Unsafe with any Tweed?

Friends, I ain’t no doctor, but Bob Dole says collar priapism can have serious side effects. Look around you; even Stevie Wonder can see that the three hour collar pop is a gateway style which leads to the day long collar pop, and occasionally to its more severe cousin – the dreaded permanent collar pop. You can be big pimpin’ in your Rocky fleece but that collar pop will give you away every time. Sure, it shows vitality and spirit, in the way that one might find Napoleon’s invasion of Belgium “spirited.” But the women do not want you to come on too strong. Walking around popped all day might attract the occasional whore, theta, Yale girl, or governor, but these scurrilous characters are hardly worth the valuable time of a future I-banker such as yourself. You want a sweet woman, a good girl, and whipping that collar out all the time will not help your cause. To violate copyright law…once you pop, you just. can’t. stop.

Even worse, the ugly problem of Collara is complicated by its gestation method. The condition seems to spread in two ways. The first, more malignant mechanism is through the advice of upperclassmen. To be sure, more experienced men can be a valuable resource. They can give you the DL on classes. They can teach you the secrets of the late night Frist triple-swipe (NOT an urban legend!) However, that upperclass men will help you hookup with a fine lady is about as unlikely as ALF being the second shooter on the grassy knoll. Those older bastards want to score, too, and any Mol. Bio. major worth her salt could tell you that it’s a simple case of competitive inhibition. Over prescription of the collar pop is their way of taking you out of the game. Sure, it shows the ladies you’re a sure thing, but older guys know that there’s value in mystery. The savvy Texas hold-em fiend would never think of showing his cards before the flop; why is the freshman guy so eager to pop?

On the other hand, maybe those wily older men didn’t convince you; maybe you’ve reached the conclusion that it would be cool to try to push the length of your pop yourself. If that is the case, you may be suffering from spontaneous Collara, a condition commonly found in males between the ages of 18-18 ½ . Perhaps like the collar itself, the idea just popped into your head one day. Wouldn’t it be awesome, you thought, to just walk around with it popped all day, ready for any and all attention a lady might want to give? Wouldn’t that be invigorating? Perhaps popping it up for that long would be a serious rush, in more ways than one. So you reached up to your neck and flicked your wrist. Where was your posse to shove some sense into your head? Friends don’t let friends pop their collars. On the off chance that some dissolute wench does stumble in your direction, keep in mind that slut rushes only last for hours. Collara lasts for a lifetime. It’s the herpes of the Ralph Lauren catalog.

So fellas, I’ve got some advice for you. Let that collar flop down; let it hang free, long loose and full of…juice? The ladies won’t mind. In fact, they’ll appreciate your restraint. Save the collar pop for that special girl. Then, once you find her, when you know she wants it, hang it high and let it fly. Until then, keep the nether regions of that collar in the dark. When the time comes you won’t disappoint; it will pop and her panties will drop.