Dispatches from Urbanalia - part 2

This week was another eye-opener in a funny way for me. Instead of having a separate Health class, our school has speakers who come in once every other week into a regular class period to talk to freshmen.

There's one of these speakers who talks from the Women Against Rape group. He's an ex-con who has huge street cred with the kids, and he is trying as hard as he can to get them to choose a different path than he chose. Kudos to the dude!

The second one is in last period algebra. I can't remember which group he's from, but he has more deep clinical knowledge. Last week he talked about drugs. This week, STD's were the topic.

Now, how this gentleman stood in front of the class and spoke seriously, but engagingly, about such topics... every time he says something like Penis or Vagina or Sex, they all start giggling or saying slang words for the same thing. I did my best not to laugh, I swear. But then he started talking about AIDS.

Not a laughing matter, AIDS. I realize that. We actually had a good discussion going. But then he started talking about how it's transmitted - by bodily fluids. First, these fluids have to get into the body, and they really only do that through mucous membranes, which, as you can imagine, sparked a bunch of racous debate.

Then he goes back to the bodily fluids. He says these are blood, saliva (but only if it has a lot of blood in it), and sexual secretions. He asks what the names of sexual secretions are. One kid says semen, and he agrees. Yes, semen is the sexual secretion in a male. What's the sexual secretion in a female? The girl near me says "That's got a name?" in disgusted wonder. I had to agree, silently.

But I still kept in the laugh.

Then the speaker asks, what might make you think you have AIDS? At first, there is silence. Then, this one child: a small, normally quiet boy, speaks up.

"Yo, you junk be on fire and shit."

Of course, the speaker corrected this misconception (that's another STD, he states, and goes into disgusting detail). But I didn't really hear. I was too busy wiping the tears of laughter from my eyes.

(*)>