*for the six friends mentioned within... I do love you all*

There are many reasons why I would advise parents to send their children to public schools. Yes, private schools sound better because the media focuses on school shootings and other acts of violence. The truth, however, is that going to a public school could save your kid's life. I know. I went to private school for most of my life and I know first hand the after-effects. I knew that when I graduated I would have no idea what was going on. Yes, even in private school kids learn all about sex and drugs and those sorts of things, but they never experience it for themselves. They know hypothetically that if someone says "Wan' a joint?" they should say "NO!" but knowing hypothetically and doing are two different things. You see, for years a cloud of mystery has surrounded the allusive joint and these kids want to know about it. More than that, they want to experience it. So they do. A lot. And if those same kids had gone to a school half full of potheads, they would have seen that, though it won't kill them, it will make them stupid. Then most of them would have actually said "No, thanks though." My junior year of high school I participated in a debate about the legalization of drugs. A month of nothing but studying drugs. Me and three of my friends sitting around justifying legalizing drugs. Needless to say, we won the debate. I've been for the legalization of marijuana ever since. Back then it was all about the fuzziness of the facts. It made drugs interesting.

It's the same situation with sex, but sex is even more allusive, especially if you send your kids to a Christian or Catholic school. Sex is a huge no-no, which also means it's an all-encompassing topic at the lunchtable. I can't tell you how many times I explained the menstrual cycle, or other various questionable topics, complete with hand motions at lunchtime. In ninth grade my friends and I were fed up with just talking about certain things, seeing as none of us had boyfriends, and decided to take matters into our own hands. There were three of us girls and we invited four boys to a party. They thought it was a late New Year's Eve party; little did they know we had a bottle with their names on it. Tough as it is to admit, three fifteen-year-old girls were about to play spin-the-bottle with three fifteen-year-old boys. You noticed I said only three boys? Well, that's because one boy out of the seven of us was mature enough to say "No thanks" to our stupidity. The terrible thing about playing this game with those people is that we were all very close friends. We loved each other very much as friends. Kissing your best friends is a bad idea. So we all sat in a circle and we spun the bottle at least fifty times each. It would have been more economical to just choose a partner and go at it, but that would have been "promiscuous." Eventually we moved on to "A Minute in Heaven," our chicken version of "Seven Minutes in Heaven." Basically all we did was French kiss, but I got to know the insides of my friend's mouths more than I really wanted. Then next day was hell. There is no other way to describe it. None of our friendships were ever the same. A lot of really emotional things were said and done and considered and lost. This was the closest most of us got to sex in our Christian high school. We feared sex. We feared what our parents and teachers and God would think. And after that night, we knew the fear was not entirely unfounded.

The point is, if I had gone to public school, those things wouldn't have happened. I would probably have done many varieties of drugs and slept with a guy by the time I was thirteen. I'm certainly not condoning those things. Drugs are terrible for you and sex at such a young age is wrong on many levels. But which way of learning is better - to just do it and get it over with, or to wait and find out later the details of sex and drugs? Eventually everyone learns that drugs are dangerous and sex is complicated. And certainly if I had gone to public school I wouldn't have been so paranoid about going to college. I would have been more prepared for life in general. I guess we all learn in our own time.

08/05/2001

Posted on 10/26/2004
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