Not Eudora
By Harry Welty
Published Nov
10, 2005
Five Anecdotes about Sex
My Dad's a Boy
One day I told my seventh grade Geography class how I hadn't wanted to be one of
those parents whose children grew up embarrassed and confused about sex. I told
my students that I was quite pleased with myself until the Sunday I took my family to Perkins.
We were seated in the middle of the restaurant which was packed with people
dressed in their Sunday best. My three year old son stood up on his chair and
made an announcement to all the diners. "I am a boy and I have a penis!"
he said proudly. As I blanched, my son pointed to me and added grandly, "My
Dad is a boy and he has a penis!"
My students burst into a paroxysm of laughter at the first mention of genitalia.
I twisted my face into a close approximation of the horror I had felt at
Perkins. "I DIDN'T WANT ANYONE TO KNOW THAT I HAD ONE OF THOSE," I
whined as my student's sides split spilling guts across the floor.
"And then," I continued, "my son pointed to our waitress and
announced: "She is a girl and she has a vagina!"
As my students clutched their aching sides I added, "I'm sure it wasn't
true."
Vagina Monologue
I had some tough kids in my eighth grade American History class. Many had failed
the class the previous year and had to take it again before they could go on to
high school. One day I annoyed a particularly surly girl who took her revenge by
calling me a "douche."
I looked at her coolly and wondered whether she knew what a douche was. This was
1987 and the Massengale Company had been advertising douches on television for
over a year. "Do you know what that word means?" I asked her.
"Nooooo," she replied with a smirk. I defined it for her so that
she could never again claim ignorance.
"It's a vagina cleaner," I told her evenly. She just smiled
maliciously and that was the end of that or so I thought.
A few weeks later I was summoned to the principal's office. The girl's mother
had come to ask me to cut her daughter a little slack. She told me that her
daughter disliked men because her grandfather had sexually abused her. I was
taken aback and instantly acquired some sympathy for my young tormentor. I
described the name calling incident and glanced over at my principal. He was
horrified.
A few days later I got a letter from the Director of Secondary Education, my
Principal's boss. It told me that using language like "vagina cleaner"
was reprehensible, unprofessional, and might determine whether I would be given
tenure. The letter was put in my personnel file.
I was denied tenure later that year and gave up teaching. Never again would I
have seventh graders rolling on the floor laughing.
AIDS Lesson
A couple years later I was at my own children's school along with volunteers
from a girl's college basketball team. One of the players asked me if I had ever
substituted at Washington Junior High. I told her that I had and asked how she
happened to remember me. She told me that it was a lesson I taught.
This was back in 1983 when the AID's epidemic (then incurable and always fatal)
had America in a panic. My lesson had been a simple one. I wrote the name
of a boy and girl on the blackboard, "Mary" and "Bill"
perhaps. I told the class that while Mary was a virgin "Bill" had
slept with one other girl, "Miranda." I drew lines between the
partners which took on the appearance of a family tree.
I explained that Miranda had been sexually active with three boys two of whom
had been virgins while the third was more experienced. The third boy had had sex
with twelve girls. This prodigious number elicited guffaws from the class.
For each of the twelve new girls on the blackboard I wrote the number of sex
partners they had had. It was mostly, but not always, zero except for the
twelfth girl. I told the class that she was addicted to drugs and had to
prostitute herself to pay for them. I said that she had slept with, oh I don't
remember, something like 212 men. This figure made the class burst out laughing
again although more nervously than before.
I pointed to the relatively inexperienced Mary and Bill on my chart and told the
class that if just one of the several hundred people on the blackboard had AIDS
it meant that Mary and Bill could be infected as well.
Radio News Report
I have always been "pro-choice." There is no way I would risk the life
of my Mother, Wife or Daughter for the "life" of a newly fertilized
egg. Even so, I have always been troubled by the extreme philosophy which holds
that every female should have an absolute right to an abortion at any time
during a pregnancy no questions asked. In Republican circles this means
that I am a "baby killer" who should never be endorsed for public
office if it can be prevented. I
recently heard a speaker at a Republican convention accuse people like me of
committing more mass murders than Hitler and Stalin combined.
When my daughter was eight or nine she overheard part of a radio report I was
listening to about abortion. She asked me what an abortion was and I told her.
"Oh that's terrible! How could anybody kill a baby?" she asked me. I
would have been appalled if my daughter had reacted any differently. I'm still
pro-choice.
Helping hand
A couple days ago I heard another story on the radio. It was about Uganda, an
African nation which had managed to reduce the percentage of its population
infected with AIDs from 20% to 6%. Since it achieved this milestone President
Bush pledged 15 billion dollars to fight AIDS in Africa. Under US pressure
Uganda abandoned its successful campaign against AIDS which stressed the use of
condoms. The Bush Administration frowns on condoms because they promote
immorality. As a result the percentage of Ugandans suffering from AIDS has
jumped up to 9 percent. 800,000 Ugandans have gotten AIDS since America began
helping them. Now that's what I call pro-life!
Iraqis don't know how lucky they are.
Harry Welty is a small time politician who lets it all hang out at: www.snowbizz.com
Here's
a tough rebuttal for advocates of the pro choice cause
Also, look at the two emails my
column elicited in the column on this page's upper left from an ex student and
ex classmate.
