Silly Rabbit! Kicks Are for Kids!

I was 18 and still in high school when my girlfriend told me she was pregnant.

Yes, I had condoms but she didn't like them, so we equally shared First-Place for the Stupid Awards that fall.

As bleak as things seemed for me at that moment there was a small light waiting for me at the end of the expectant tunnel. Until that time I had never of the heard the term "hysterical pregnancy", wouldn't even have believed such a thing existed, but that's what it turned out to be.

Phew.

This was, of course, long before the five-minute pregnancy tests we rely on these days, when actual rabbbits had to actually die in order to be certain that gestation was in production. All I knew at the time was that I had two really pissed-off sets of parents and one really anxious girlfriend leaning on me to do the right thing.

One quickie marriage, four uncomfortable months and one quickie divorce later I emerged a more enlightened human, suddenly all too aware of the terrors inherent in the human reproductive system. As you might imagine, the moment I heard the word "pregnant" escape the dewy lips of my teenaged gal-pal my world, even as limited as it was then, began to fold in on itself like a sand-castle before a level-five hurricane.

College? Poof!
Travel the world? No way, Jose.
Become an artist? Not with mouths to feed, Charlie.

It shouldn't take an event like this for a man, or a woman, to take control of their reproductive life, but all I remember in high school biology were endless filmstrips featuring frogs and beetles gettin' it on. Not exactly practical advice.

So, yeah, I'm an adherent for real, honest, explicit sex education and cheap, simple birth control. The world would be a whole lot livelier if a large portion of the population didn't have waste their entire lives dealing with the mistake of only a passionate moment.

=mike=