“Bebbies having bebbies…”
Jun 27th, 2008 by Kristi
“Don’t know nuthin’ ’bout no love.”
I was not having sex when I was 16. I was also not having ‘boyfriends’ or ‘kissing’ or ‘dates’ when I was 16 either, so whatevs. Which was a good thing, because I was always a little behind in my understanding of reproductive processes. This is what happens when you spend your 5th grade very special heath class giggling and making jokes rather than paying attention. And why I was quite befuddled by the purpose of feminine hygiene products which were not pads and how they worked.
So when I was 16 I had a few boys who were my friends, not call on the phone friends, but hang out and make jokes in the classroom friends, and a couple of good girl girlfriends who liked to laugh and sing and giggle like me. They were the ones who told me in euphamistic terms how the feminine hygiene products which are not pads worked. I forbid them from discussing matters in my presence ever again.
One of these friends was named Patty. She was a nut. She’s still a nut. She’s a nut in Germany serving the United States Air Force or Army, I always forget. When we were 16 we started saying the following phrase ‘Bebbies having bebbies. Don’t know nuthin’ ’bout no love.’ And then we’d assume grandmotherly African American personas who spent their days carping about all the youngins getting pregnant.
Did I mention I didn’t understand how tampons worked? Just clearing that up…
So quote good times end quote, for me, at the age of 16, consisted of me speaking with a funny voice and singing broadway style songs incessantly with my equally not cool friends. Which, by the way, ended up being the BEST BIRTH CONTROL ever invented and I highly recommend it for all you 16 year old girls reading this blog right now. PS - if you are 16 and reading this blog then I must be the coolest not-quite-32 year old on the block. Email me so we can be bffs, kay? Mkay!
I read about all these pregnant teenagers with a certain degree of befuddlement and mild curiosity. Because I was very much a kid when I was 16, and all my friends were kids, and safe sex talks were as lost on me as they’d be on an old timey rocking chair on the front porch of a Cracker Barrel. Irrelevant.
Now I look back and I’m very glad that I wasn’t the girl at the parties with the illegally procured alcohol, and that I wasn’t friends with those boys and girls. The ‘bad’ kids, who weren’t actually bad, but doing exactly what was expected of them by their peers and parents.
And I certainly don’t judge those hapless, pregnant girls out there. I feel sorry for them. My sister got pregnant when she was 16. It’s been a long, hard road for her. But she managed. In the end, we all manage, don’t we? Silly girls who don’t pay attention to biological processes, not-slutty but sexually active girls who find themselves in a pickle…it usually all works itself out, doesn’t it? It does in my world.
And here, for your viewing pleasure, is exactly everything I knew and understood about the human reproductive cycle when I was 16. In song.
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We match. I didn’t have much of a clue about the S until I was at LEAST legally an adult. And I sang silly songs and didn’t kiss anybody until I was 19 and even then. . .I don’t know. But I did hold hands. That there is somethin’, right?
Uh…. I’m just lucky I made it out of high school unpregnant.
Some of my cousins had babies as teenagers. It hasn’t been great - those kids have had pretty rootless lives, poor things. SO I’m sending my kids to convent school. That oughtta hold ‘em.
First, my 2 year old thought that that song was a stitch. Greeeat… She’s trying to sing “reproduction!” Sounds like “reep a duckin”
Anyway! I was not so clueless. Very much the opposite of clueless. And thankful that I didn’t get pregnant or worse…
Boo! It says the video is no longer available. I too forbid any such discussion of certain products when I was in high school. *shudder*
When I was 16, I was too busy enjoying having my license and going for slurpees to be dating boys. I made fun of my friends who kissed boys. I still make fun of one friend in particular for kissing one boy in particular. ugh.
Lucky us for growing up.
Booya is right!!
haha! I wasn’t having sex, having boyfriends and having kissings either! I was however, VERY VERY interested in sex. Not having it, but the whole process of it and how one gets pregnant. I got so much into the science of sex that I scared myself into being an advocate of abstinence! In fact, I wrote a paper in h.s. about abstinence that my teacher entered into some writer’s contest at a local college and I got like honorable mention or something. So it really was a shame I broke that rule two years later, but it was after a year of going out with the same guy and then of course when we did the deed that boy was practically wearing a wetsuit on his peen that was bathed in spermicide.
I know, I’m such a romantic.
Elaine as an abstinence advocate? I think I just had a heart attack.
I KNOW right???! LOL! I couldn’t believe it when I wrote it down!
When I heard about that pact, I just about pissed myself. Umn, yeah, I like being a mommy, but there are a lot of times I wish I could just be carefree and 16 again. Mostly when the two kids are screaming or crying or making me watch yet another Yo Gabba Gabba marathon.
HILARIOUS. That was me too. And I’m fairly certain I watched Grease 2 when I was 16, say, oh I don’t know, 100 million times?
Guess what I found today! I came across my junior high yearbooks and you put a sticky note on a page that said ” here’s my number, XXX-XXXX. Call me.”
NO. WAY. Megan and I were in 8th grade p.e. together, by the way. I’ve lost all my yearbooks. The junior high ones were the first to go. Big brown glasses and crispy tidal wave bangs have no place in my life right now. Unless you scan some of those pages.
I’ll see what I can do.
You don’t feel the education system in Texas let you down, not transferring knowledge about your body to you, or your sister, or everyone else? The state has a very high rate of teenage pregnancy because of a lack of proper education on the subject, and a stigma over knowing about or having sex.
I think it’s completely obscene that pregnancy is an “optional” component of the sexual education curriculum in my home province. It’d be like trying to teach chemistry, and forgetting to mention there are atoms.
Oh wow. You don’t know me very well.
In an answer…no. I find it laughable that anyone would have the nerve to blame their school system for getting knocked up. And as a libertarian, I’m not a fan of sex ed in the classroom anyway. Not for moral reasons, for personal responsibility reasons. As in, it’s not the taxpayer’s responsibility to teach kids how to use condoms. It’s their parent’s responsibility. Nor should it be the taxpayer’s responsibility to take care of unwanted pregnancies, neither through abortions or healthcare or any other subsidies to ease the burden of having a child. It’s the parent’s and now grandparent’s responsibility. Schools are not parents.
And don’t get me started on character ed. Uggghhhh.
Except the result of [unplanned] pregnancy doesn’t affect only the individual, it also affects innocent children who can not take personal responsibility if their parent(s) didn’t know they’d wind up with a kid and no job or complete education. Unplanned pregnancy affects society, which is exactly why it’s an issue that should be covered well in the public school system.
Of course a school can’t replace good parenting, but it can certainly supplement it where there are parents who are negligent in teaching their children the most basic features of their bodies, including names for parts, and unavoidable reproductive development.
I’m not sure what “character ed” is, but if it means teaching kids “I am special”, then I’d have to agree if you roll your eyes at it.
Character education is when schools are allocated millions of dollars and hours of time to teach things like:
don’t be a bully
teasing hurts
don’t cheat
be kind
…common sense stuff. I taught at a school where we actually had this sketchy/dancy type group of self-respecting young adults come and lip-sync songs about respecting your classmates.
Yeah, that’s almost completely a waste of time. If the teachers/parents aren’t instilling respect and empathy into kids, a dance troupe and more money certainly won’t either.