Get tested & use a raincoat

Quick quiz: when was your last HIV test? And where are your condoms?

What? You don’t know?

Don’t worry. I’m not going to lecture you. You don’t want to hear it and I don’t have the time. I will just give you two marching orders:

Order #1 – if you are sexually active, you must always use condoms to prevent sexually transmitted diseases (nasty little buggers) from infecting your body. The only exception to this rule is if you are in a long-term, really committed, monogamous (i.e. no playing around) relationship. Even then, you should think about it. Nah – don’t bother. Just wrap it up.

Order #2Get tested. I did it. Senator Barack Obama did it. It’s fast and easy and it’s the righteous thing to do.

Celebrate World AIDS Day by saving your own life. Get tested. Use protection all the time.

And keep reading.

9 Replies to “Get tested & use a raincoat”

  1. I found out a few years ago that the rather aged health teacher at the high school I coach at has been teaching students that the AIDS virus is so small it can get through a condom (among other inaccuracies). Talk about anger on my part– as if people with AIDS need to be ostracized any more, and as if yet another more teens need a botched sex education class. For what it’s worth, I reported it all (called the CDC and had them fax over a signed testament to his inaccuracies), but the point of this comment was to mention that I’m happy about the growing number of resources with correct information, such as the sites you’ve linked.

  2. After watching Scrubs last night, I’m kind of scared. Considering JD got his girlfriend pregnant without even “entering the battlezone”. He didn’t have a condom and didn’t want to get her pregnant… so he didn’t go in at the last minute and BAM! She’s preggers anyway. His soldiers found their way without his leadership.

  3. My health teacher (in an excellent public school in a liberal, white-collar community) told us that while “theoretically” it couldn’t happen, he would never shake hands with somebody who has AIDS, because, you know, sweat. I guess this would be a little more than 10 years ago… even then, that was utterly unacceptable. What you’re saying is even worse — and it’s happening now??? Geez.

    I weep for the country.

  4. I happen to know when, ’cause it was very early on in my relationship with the woman I later married. We both had one, and have been in that exception zone you mention ever since.

  5. I hate how at school, the health teachers are just like, “Sex, it’s bad, you’ll get an STD and die, so just don’t do it.” No. That doesn’t work for most teens. No matter what, teens (and adults too, obviously) will have sex so I think public schools should teach a lot more STD and pregnancy prevention rather than abstinence.

    Thanks Laurie for the links. They were very interesting and more factual than anything a health teacher has ever told me.

  6. Random, sorry, but I watched Speak for the first time the other night. And it was amazing. I cried at the end. I hate to say it but I did, specifically at he part where Melinda shows Mr. Freedman her closet.

    My favorite parts were when Mr. Freedman tells her to close her eyes and draw a tree..it just felt so real to me. It was personal between them, yet not it any way sexual which was wonderful. And when she’s in class, and shes just sitting with her hands clenched on the table, staring away, and he gives her the picasso book. Just how she sits like that, staring, was amazing to me because I have been sad like that, have done that so many times before.
    Loved loved hairwoman! How she writes “Symbolism” on the board! 🙂 The whole thing was amazing, of course not as good as the book, but good.

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