Saturday, May. 07, 2005
Card shopping, posted at 7:41 p.m.
Epiphany in Baltimore has moved to epiphanyinbaltimore.blogspot.com Feeling much better. I still haven't eaten anything since Thursday, but I'm cooking up a veggie burger as we speak. We'll see how it goes. I spent a good part of today gardening, which is a healthy way to spend the day. And I've actually worked up half an appetite.I also went to Greeting and Readings to shop for my mother's soon-to-be-belated Mother's Day Present. I didn't get one, but did end up getting a card for a student. It's too bad Hallmark doesn't make a "So you think you're pregnant? Tsk, tsk. Anyhow, here's the number to Planned Parenthood to find out for sure" card.
A few of things about this girl:
1. She has a 90% average in honors classes.
2. She is not yet 14.
3. She is two months late on her period.
4. She went to a doctor but the results aren't in yet.
5. She did not know there was a such thing as a home pregnancy test.
6. She has been having morning sickness, but it may be allergies.
7. The potential father is also a student at our school.
8. Neither sets of parents knows and the only reason I know is because a colleague of mine suspected, and asked. She finally relented and told. I'm in charge of getting her this phone number on Monday, since I'm good friends with a higher-up at Planned Parenthood of MD.
9. She doesn't know I know. I hope the Maya Angelou card softens that.
10. She's running for Class President.
11. I checked. There's no legal obligation or right to inform the parents on the part of teachers in this situation. All we can do is give information.
12. Early in the year, she wrote an essay in my class in which she swore she wasn't going to be one of those girls from her just-off-North-Avenue neighborhood that got pregnant as a teenager.
I don't mean to be cynical, but she knows better than this. She might be 13, but she's not stupid. But, I have to admit, this seems to be happening more often now than it happened when our former sex ed guru was a teacher here. She was pretty much forced out - to Planned Parenthood, it turns out (she's the aforementioned friend)- and replaced by a woman who hangs Abstinence posters on her classroom door and helps bring in Ehrlich's people to do Abstinence-Only Assemblies. I don't even know where a kid could get a condom at our school now, even though all schools are supposed to have them available.