Next to the last week: Sex Ed for the seventh graders

Oh my. This week the seventh graders had sex ed in their science classes. Even though they were warned not to ask questions about the subject outside of the science classroom, a few questions leaked out. In my colleague’s class, Rosie’s tutorial question for AVID was, “What is oral sex?” Marty answered, “You mean gold sex?” When their teacher asked a little further what he was referring to, he replied, “Oro sex, right? Gold sex.” (Yes he is a Spanish speaker.)

The same day, in my classroom, an eighth grader went to get some cups from the trunk of my car. When he returned, he pulled my keys out of his pocket and with them a condom. He looked at it in horror, and said, “That’s not mine. These are my uncle’s pants. I just put them on this mroning. That’s not mine.” And he left it in my hand as he slowly walked away. It was as though it was mine and had somehow been part of my keys all along. He got as far away from me as possible and just stood there staring at me. I managed not to laugh at all. I just said, “Hm. Not mine either. I’m going to put it in my desk drawer and see how long it takes one of the snoopy seventh graders to find it.” And there it sits to this moment.

How times have changed! When I was in the fifth grade the girls got “the movie” while the boys went to another room. We assumed they were getting one as well, but no one ever talked about it so I still don’t know if they did. Sex was never mentioned at all in an official way at school. There was definitely nothing about gold sex!

UPDATE: I took the condom out of my desk drawer. No one found it, and I decided the joke was on me, so I removed it.