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Sep. 27th, 2010 09:35 pmI was reading this post on SF Drama and it made me think about my health class in high school.
Our teacher was, in a word, awesome.
She was upfront, honest, and unafraid to tell us the truth about everything from homosexuality to masturbation to contraception. We got extra credit if we went into a store and bought condoms. She presented every side of every argument. We had someone from Planned Parenthood in and we had someone from the Pro-Life camp*. She never gave her opinion, or tried to influence ours.(though I think we could infer fairly easily she was in the pro-choice camp.) One of the teachers at the time was pregnant (and holy cow that baby is 25 now) and she came in and told us what it was like being pregnant. She wanted to sit down a lot.
The thing I remember most clearly was on the last day, she split us into groups - boys vs girls - and gave us poster board with the words 'breast' 'vagina' 'penis' and 'earlobe'. She had us come up with all the slang terms we possibly could for all those words.
The boys came up with many more than the girls did, but that wasn't the point of the exercise. The point was, we couldn't come up with anything much for 'earlobe'. She pointed out that we don't nick-name body parts like earlobe, but have an infinite number for the more 'sexual' parts. She said, 'I never called them anything other than what they were.'
That really stuck with me, which is why I never told Charlie his penis was anything other than a penis. And you'd be amazed at the shocked looks he'd get when he said penis instead of something insipid like 'pee-pee' or 'dingle'.
I have more issues than a magazine subscription when it comes to sex, but that comes more from not taking her advice than otherwise. The world needs more people like her, I think.
*I mostly remember my friend Shari mocking the pamphlet they gave out. It was the 'diary' of an unborn child. There was this one passage where the baby asked 'how do you look, mom?' and my friend wrote in the margin 'with my eyes, dear.' It was hilarious to me at the time.
Our teacher was, in a word, awesome.
She was upfront, honest, and unafraid to tell us the truth about everything from homosexuality to masturbation to contraception. We got extra credit if we went into a store and bought condoms. She presented every side of every argument. We had someone from Planned Parenthood in and we had someone from the Pro-Life camp*. She never gave her opinion, or tried to influence ours.(though I think we could infer fairly easily she was in the pro-choice camp.) One of the teachers at the time was pregnant (and holy cow that baby is 25 now) and she came in and told us what it was like being pregnant. She wanted to sit down a lot.
The thing I remember most clearly was on the last day, she split us into groups - boys vs girls - and gave us poster board with the words 'breast' 'vagina' 'penis' and 'earlobe'. She had us come up with all the slang terms we possibly could for all those words.
The boys came up with many more than the girls did, but that wasn't the point of the exercise. The point was, we couldn't come up with anything much for 'earlobe'. She pointed out that we don't nick-name body parts like earlobe, but have an infinite number for the more 'sexual' parts. She said, 'I never called them anything other than what they were.'
That really stuck with me, which is why I never told Charlie his penis was anything other than a penis. And you'd be amazed at the shocked looks he'd get when he said penis instead of something insipid like 'pee-pee' or 'dingle'.
I have more issues than a magazine subscription when it comes to sex, but that comes more from not taking her advice than otherwise. The world needs more people like her, I think.
*I mostly remember my friend Shari mocking the pamphlet they gave out. It was the 'diary' of an unborn child. There was this one passage where the baby asked 'how do you look, mom?' and my friend wrote in the margin 'with my eyes, dear.' It was hilarious to me at the time.