How do those Shells Stay on, Anyway?

I can only properly imagine being a merman, inasmuch as one can properly imagine such a thing. Now, the question I have, as a merman and a hu-man, is,

How do those shells stay on?

This isn't just my question (human or mer). It's the question of all thirteen-to-eighteen-year-old merkids. I bet, just as a guy wonders about how the hell he's going to get that bra off Suzy Wearsabranow, merdudes wonder about shells. Or do they? Maybe it's really easy to take the shells off? Maybe they adhere only loosely to mermaid boobs by some property of deep sea physics?

That's unlikely, because mermaids come up for air, and their shells stay on; unless they're slutty mermaids, or sexually liberated mermaids (not the same thing), and they leave their shells at home. Or maybe they just forget their shells at home.

Or maybe our awareness of mermaids has been puritanically censored by the great Prudish Merkings, (Mermaids have kings, right? Or queens, whatever – they adhere to undersea despotism, that's the point), and instead of fig leaves they saw fit to affix sea shells, since figs don't grow underwater.

Merchicks clearly know the answers, and they're just not telling.

Can Mermaids get Drunk?

I've been thinking a lot about mermaids lately, possibly on account of this weekend's upcoming Mermaid Parade in Coney Island. I don't think I'll actually make it to the parade, but I'll be there in spirit.

School Spirit!

I personally had a fine high school experience; very little trauma. But I bet if I'd been a merman, it'd have been a lot worse. Maybe it'd all be second nature to me if I actually had been a merman, but at the moment, I'm plagued with a LOT of questions:

Can merpeople drink alcohol? If they try to drink booze, does it get watered-down with sea salt? are their circulatory systems even comparable such that it's metabolized the same way?

Clearly mermaids can't smoke marijuana – it's not even clear to me that they have lungs. If you live most of your life underwater you must have gills, right? If they have both then that makes sense, otherwise why would they bask on rocks in the sun? (mermaids clearly bask on rocks in the sun, it's part of the profile).

Am I suffering from a critical misunderstanding here? Are mermaids and mermen severely sexually dimorphic, such that mermaids are sexy girl-fishes and mermen are ugly fish creatures human from the waist down? (A SICK INVERSION INDEED).

Or is that what all merpeople look like during puberty?

I don't know the answers to all these questions, but that's not going to stop me from making them up.