Truth is, we didn’t have sex ed when I was in public school. But, as things go when you’re growing up, lessons will be taught and learned, whether you officially ask for them or not.<\/p>\n
In a seventh grade junior high school class we, a class of relatively intelligent kids from scholarly-oriented families, became involuntary lab rats in a well-meaning socio-psycho-educational experience.<\/p>\n
Those ‘ologists had developed an experiment they hoped would help bad students who were additionally delinquent in other respects, maybe heading for a career in crime. Such kids were to be placed in classrooms of smart kids of good character, where our radiant presence would encourage the bad boys to re-form into good students with good character. Like us.<\/p>\n
So, one day, a beaming school official brought into our classroom a model bad boy. Our<\/em> model bad boy. He was introduced by name and led to a desk. He sat. We all murmured some sort of welcome, and class continued.<\/p>\n Was it a class in New York history or civics? I’m not sure. But I am clear about what followed, when our teacher left the classroom for whatever reason. And our new classmate got up from his desk, sidled up to the blackboard, picked up a piece of chalk and drew something that could be interpreted as a vulva, and right next to it something definitively a penis.<\/p>\n No, it was not a traumatic or threatening experience, not for us girls anyway. However pre-pubescent girls expressed disapproval and embarassment in those days, well, we expressed.<\/p>\n But the boys? They grinned and sniggered and smirked, swiveling around to give Those Looks to each other, and to the bad boy who was having a great time at the blackboard.<\/p>\n That was the end of the experiment. The next day, bad boy was no longer in our class and we were never told what happened. But we were smart; we didn’t need to be told.<\/p>\n The boys grinned and sniggered and smirked at dirty pictures drawn on a blackboard by a bad boy.<\/p>\n Now, why on earth did that incident pop up in my brain a couple of days ago?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Truth is, we didn’t have sex ed when I was in public school. But, as things go when you’re growing up, lessons will be taught and learned, whether you officially ask for them or not. In a seventh grade junior … Continue reading