To catch a middle-schooler
Well, hello there, friends, welcome to another edition of What’s So Funny! Today’s episode is a very special one, as we’re going to discuss children and sexuality! Hey, that’s weird—the doorbell is ringing. Holy shit! It’s the guy from To Catch A Predator! Nice to meet you, man, love your stuff. I’d really like to chat more with you, but I’m super busy inside writing a column about kids and sex so maybe you should come around another time, cool? Yeah, you can bring the camera crew; I’m dying to see how you make the show. Keep up the good work!
No, you have a nice day!
Anyway, back to preteens and fucking. I’m not saying it happens all the time, nor am I saying that it doesn’t exist, but whether the kids are actually bumping hairless uglies or not, they’re all thinking about it. Every one of them. How do I know? Because I was a kid once. And when we weren’t touching batteries to our tongues or depriving our brains of oxygen for momentary buzzes, we were obsessed with sex. Rumors flew around the school of who had done what, who hadn’t done what, how who did what with a wiffle ball bat, how Betsy Stuart was a giant whore.
Seriously, everyone had fingered her.
And this was before the Internet even existed! This was a time when our clumsy misunderstanding of all things sexual trickled down from equally misinformed siblings, from salacious tidbits and photographs unearthed from dog-eared porno magazines kept under the mattress. Now, in a generation where anybody can pick up their cell phone and watch “2 Girls 1 Cup,” I can only imagine how obsessed the kids must be with sex. I know it makes a lot of people squirm to talk about this, but I have no problem writing about it because it’s happening. It would be cowardly not to address it. If anything, I’m actually comfortable discussing 12-year-olds scissoring.
Wow, it’s the doorbell again! I’m crazy popular today. I’m not going to get it this time, though—too busy.
Angevine Middle School in Lafayette made national headlines recently when the principal sent an e-mail to parents explaining that students were wearing “jelly bracelets," different colored bracelets that represented that student’s level of sexual experience and/or how far sexually that student was willing to go. A further look into it exposed a game that revolves around the rubbery bangle called Snap, where boys go and snap off a certain colored bracelet from the girl’s wrist, a gesture that indicates that the two now have a date to consummate that corresponding sexual act.
Oh snap, indeed!
An uproar ensued, and the bracelets have since been banned at the school, as they have been banned at several other schools around the country. Angevine Middle School, kudos to you for not punishing students who were caught wearing these bracelets, but simply making them remove them instead. Situation sensibly and reasonably handled. But Angevine—no, screw that—America, if you think this has put a stop to middle-schoolers plotting around sex, you are sorely mistaken.
At my school, we had fuck tabs. Anyone else remember this? They were the tabs off of the tops of pop cans. We would remove those—it had to be done perfectly, no botched job constituted an authentic fuck tab—and then collect them and if someone gave you a fuck tab, it meant they wanted to fuck you. Only the boys gave out fuck tabs, though, we were very old-fashioned that way. I can actually remember people carrying Ziploc bags full of fuck tabs, just in case one day they decided they wanted to bang the entire seventh grade.
My point is not simply that my peers and I were witless buffoons, equating aluminum tops with sex, but that kids will childishly find a way to dance around the issue of sexuality because that is what kids do. And even if you outlaw some horrific company slyly making their fortune off of promoting wrist-rape, kids will find some alternative: the color of the bands on their braces, perhaps, maybe even fuck tabs. It doesn’t mean they are all having sex; they are just trying to come to terms with their sexuality. Unless of course you’re talking about Betsy Stuart. That whore was definitely fucking. Seriously, she has, like, four kids now. Still, I got to say, for an 11-year-old, she was a pretty hot piece of ass.
Holy shit it’s the doorbell again!
