“You have a very promising future”

Oh boy, I have a doozy.

I sadly went to a catholic school all the way up until highschool. In seventh grade, your hormones are waking up, you’re noticing your peers in different ways. It’s confusing, it’s exciting, it’s fucking chaos. What you need is a mentor. What you need is someone who understands what you’re feeling and explains it to you.

Here’s what I had.

I had the same teacher for a couple of classes…english, religion, and one more I think…it’s been a long time. But the important one here is Religion.

She was one of the few teachers who wasn’t a sister of the convent of the church my school was affiliated with. Yet, somehow, she was least progressive woman in the entire school.

I’m rambling. Here’s two stories:

#1: She told a story about her roommate in college. Teacher was studious, polite blablabla. Her roommate was not. She went out and had unprotected sex nightly. Instead of contraception she just went and had abortions. (I’m not gonna bother unpacking how hard something like an abortion is to process as a 7th grader when you barely understand sex, but needless to say my perceptions of abortions and even conception was completely wacked from her)

They all graduate, move on with their lives but remain friends. Eventually her roommate gets married, and stops having abortions to have a child. She does, and when teacher goes to visit her in the hospital, she burts out in complete hysteric tears because she realized just how many babies she murdered.

Obviously that story is fucking bullshit, but a woman teaching a class of confused students that story is real as can be.

#2: A woman wanted to remain pure until she was married. One night she was in I think Las Vegas or some other sinful hellhole where she meets a lovely polite gentleman. He was very well dressed, well manicured, and somewhat flamboyant. They have some drinks and she is so enamored with this man, she realized he was the one. Since she knew this was the man she was goign to marry, why not fuck his brains out. (She probably didn’t word it that way)

So she fucks his brains out, goes to sleep. In the morning the man is gone, but there is a bouquet of flowers in her room. On it is a note “Thank you for last night. I have many nights like that, usually with men. Welcome to the wonderful world of aids”

Now that I’m a father, I look at back at this as a teachable moment. I know that I will never hide the truth from my son, no matter how painful it might be. We’re a sex positive family, and I never want my child to be confused about something and be afraid to ask me. Fuck that shit. Fuck Catholicism. Fuck indoctrinating children.

I can’t remember anything that was a straight-up factual error. There was something along these lines from a private tutor my parents had to hire to make up for too many days I missed one semester due to health problems. One day when we were covering evolutionary biology she goes, “Well, I don’t believe in this, but I’m obligated to teach it to you.” Doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence, but I appreciate the candor. Which reminds me of the time in middle school a girl in my class said her grandmother believed dinosaur bones were put there by the Devil and the teacher had to give an awkward response to that.

There is one common misconception among English teachers that I think everyone has heard at some point, the difference between “effect” and “affect” being different parts of speech.

in high school in 1984 my Honors (!) Biology teacher did a cursory overview of evolution, then said: “I had to tell you that. Of course, none of it is true and you were created by God.” <-- he was not joking.

This was a public school. In Texas, you may not be surprised to hear.

Was rather showing than telling and not just to me but everyone. But my geography teacher was doing a picture show of his hikes (don’t even remember where). And then he comes to one image where he is showering in the mountains, completely naked.

Before this pic, he only stayed on each slide for a couple seconds, but on this one, he stayed what felt like eternity before saying something like “hehe, the girls should probably look away now”.

Felt like the dude was a pervert who just wanted us to show his nudes…

Fun story! A while ago a sort of mexican version of The Onion came around called Deforma (a parody of popular newspaper “Reforma”). Their breakout article said that Mexico’s national anthem was acquired by the chinese government, and as such would no longer be public domain. It’s a bonkers story, yet a lot (And I mean a lot) of people bought it, including a significant portion of my teachers. I think hearing my maths teacher complain about it is one of my core memories now

For one year, my parents put me in a christian school. I learned how evolution was wrong in practically every “science” class.