If exposed to a breast, will you know what to do?

LINWOOD BARCLAY

Now that there's been a chance for all the hoopla and outrage to die down a bit, it's time for a more serious response to that incident during the half-time show at Sunday's Super Bowl.

All week I've been surveying psychologists, therapists, and the people who run lottery kiosks in a bid to answer the question that a lot of us are now taking the time to ask: What should you do if you see a breast unexpectedly?

After all, the sudden exposure of a breast can happen any time, any place. It's not something that's restricted to televised events. It can happen at home, in the workplace, at the mall, even in the back seat of an automobile.

You need to be ready. Here are a few steps you can take:

First of all, DON'T PANIC. This is easy to say, of course, when you're not actually faced with an exposed bosom. Reducing the duration of the "gazing period" is critical. There's no reason that seeing an exposed breast should result in any permanent physical or emotional damage, provided you ACT QUICKLY. Most of us know looking at the sun directly for anything more than a millisecond can result in eye damage, and staring at a breast you had no idea you were going to get a peek of is no different.

If subjected to an "exposure incident," try to focus on something else as quickly as possible. It doesn't matter all that much what you look at, provided it does not have any sort of sexual connotation. If the exposure does happen on television, you can switch immediately to something else, like Martha Stewart, or possibly The Weather Network. It's very helpful in this kind of an emergency, at least this time of year, when you're unlikely to see shots of people strolling along topless beaches.

If the exposure is not TV-related, divert your attention to something else in your immediate surroundings, like, say, a lamp. Well, maybe not a lamp, since the bulb is sort of shaped like ... Perhaps a couch. Well, maybe not a couch, since sometimes, when you're on the couch ... Okay, just go read something by Tom Clancy. That will pretty much deaden all the senses.

To prepare you for what is known as an "exposure incident," you may want to conduct, with members of your family, "breast drills."

All you need is a piece of fruit (orange, grapefruit, pomegranate) or even a tennis ball. Jump out from behind a wall, clutching the item in front of your chest, surprising another member of your family. Take turns doing this. With practice, your reaction will be more subdued, and the time you spend looking at the item will decrease. You'll be grateful you took this time to prepare when a real crisis strikes.

You may want to avail yourself of the services of a trauma counsellor. There's usually one around somewhere. You may be urged to discuss the incident, to express your feelings of shock and horror. Many people believe suppressing your feelings, pretending that the event never happened, just means you're going to have to deal with it later.

You must, however, be careful to engage the services of a legitimate trauma therapist, so as to avoid the following:

Counsellor: Perhaps, if you described what you saw.

Patient: Gosh, I don't know. It looked, well, it sort of looked like ....

Counsellor: Did it look like ... THIS!

Patient: Dear god! Put that away!

Finally, at some point, you have to move forward, get on with your life. And you have to know that just because this has happened to you once, there's no guarantee it won't happen again. In fact, many of these incidents come along in pairs.