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October 1995: "Mono Panic"
Mono? The first time that I was introduced to the word 'Mono', the shortening for Mononucleosis, was while watching an episode of the Simpsons that a friend had recorded for me some time earlier. In the episode, one character asked another “Can you get Mono from riding the Monorail?”. Not understanding this phrase, or why everybody else thought that it was hysterically funny, I asked a friend who, between fits of laughter, briefly explained things to me. After listening to this explanation, I went to the school library and looked up Mononucleosis for myself. About five minutes later I was pretty much satisfied that I knew everything that a teenage boy, who was in no way planning to become a doctor, needed to know about Mono, and I left things at that. However, it wouldn't be until a year later that I would find that my basic knowledge didn't quite tie in with what the rest of the town thought Mono was, what they thought Mono meant for the community, and what they thought was the root cause. The Great outbreak of 1995 Being a small rural town where the only thing for children to do over the long summer break is to choose between farm laboring and loafing, and the last thing that most parent wanted was to have their children under their feet 24/7, the corner of the Midwest in which my Mother had so inelegantly stranded me had one great summer tradition - The great Summer Camp Migration. Under this tradition, many of the local children who were too young or too lazy to do farm work, or who had any promising talents or interests that their parents saw fit to nurture (plus those who didn't actually live on farms), were sent away to camp at the start of summer vacation and were welcomed home sometime near the end. Unfortunately, one year, a couple of them brought back something a little less welcome than scout badges and picture postcards. My small town was about to be hit by the great outbreak of 1995. The first two cases of Mono appeared not all that long after summer vacation ended, and were reportedly matched in another couple of school where children had attended the same camp during the summer. Then a third case appeared. Naturally, this caused some concern. Then somebody on the varsity football team went down with some rather nasty Mono related complication, but not before spreading the virus to one of the cheerleaders for good measure, and the town erupted into a virtual panic. 'Mono Panic' I don't think that 5 cases of Mono is quite enough to call in the CDC, but this didn't stop rumors spreading through town like wildfire. Suddenly, Mono became the first and last thing that everybody spoke about. Only, the talk was not about Mono as described in the books that I had read, but instead of some fantastic hyper virulent form of the disease that everybody thought was going to rip through the town at any minute, killing dozens, hospitalizing hundreds, and giving the government one more excuse to do all of the things that the townsfolk believed that the government secretly wanted to do to turn the screws their way of life. First of all a town wide meeting was soon called to discuss what was to be done, and all kinds of crank measure were brought in. Such as the banning of all but the most essential school sports and clubs (football and year book can survive anything short of a nuclear war), and the handing out of pamphlets warning us never to drink from the same bottle as another person. This however didn't stop the the panic. If anything, it just made it worse Knowing that Mono is often transmitted through saliva, and having firmly gotten to grips with the prudish nature of the Midwest, I wasn't particularly phased by the fact that the news of the outbreak was quickly followed by some strong mutterings among parents about “the kissing disease”, and the suggesting that “making out” might have been the root cause of our troubles. What I wasn't prepared for though, was the fact that half of the town suddenly seemed perfectly prepared to take Mono's reputation for going hand in hand with teenage hormones as a catalyst for taking things to a whole new level. Something that not only required the suspension of rational thinking, but also the disposal of any faith in the moral characters of the town's children. Apparently, our little Mono outbreak was being caused by “rampant sex”. This announcement came as a bit of a surprise to me. Especially as I knew, for a fact, that 4 of the outbreakees were all virgins, and that the fifth, being only 9 years old, certainly should be too. The Lectures In order to combat this great outbreak, the town decided that we, their offspring, obviously didn't know all that we needed to know, and that we were obviously “doing things” that we shouldn't be doing. So they decreed that we need to be educated above and beyond the standard set out by the state education board. As a result of this decree, all of the children in the local schools, or at least those of use who were considered old to be old enough to be educated, were divided into two groups - one of boys and one of girls - each of which was ushered into the sports hall, separately of course, and given what is probably the vaguest lecture on sexual health in the history of the planet. This vague lecture from the school was almost immediately followed by a second, far more explicit, “community health and awareness” lecture given by a representative of a local religious group. Which the school tried very hard to pretend it had nothing whatsoever to do with, but still forced us to attend. Once I emerged from the “community health and awareness” lecture, I received a third lecture on sex, this time from my Mother. Who told me, in no uncertain terms that if I ever chose to disregard what the speaker had said about abstinence, I should also disregard what he said about not using contraception too. After the “useless school lecture”, the “non school related abstinence only lecture” and the highly embarrassing lecture from my Mother that I couldn't escape, it was the turn of the Junior Riffle Club to make its views felt in its own particular, or should that be peculiar, way. The fourth lecture that I received was given by a local Vietnam veteran (of which the town had a n abundance ) at the Rifle Club building. Who spent the best part of an hour explaining the STD situation among America's fighting men throughout history (under the slogan that roughly followed that famous HBO quote: “Flies spread diseases, so keep yours closed”, no less), and warning us that America's enemies weren't above “attempting deplete American firepower” by giving soldiers a jumbo dose of the clap. All of which was done using so many sexually explicit gun metaphors that I went actually went bright red the very next time my Mother told me to go outside and “practice my rifle drills”. Even then, that wasn't the end of . In the weeks after the “Mono Panic” started I received no fewer than 10 separate lectures about sex, with the last of which being delivered by my martial arts coach. Who explained, bluntly, that there was a very good reason why boys and girls had separate changing rooms, and that boys who looked down in the shower for longer than was necessary to locate the soap had worse things to worry about than catching Mono if he found out about it. Of course, at that age, I was still very much of the mindset that girls and dating were a distraction from studying, and so I had spent roughly the same amount of time having sex as I had hang-gliding with celebrities on the moon. The same also went for most of my friends and classmates too. All of whom came from very conservative families, most of whom were isolate from anybody who wasn't a blood relative by the shear distance during the hours that they weren't in school, and none of whom were experienced at hang-gliding either, if you know what I mean. Making this stream of lectures was more amusing and bemusing than educational to us, and firmly sealing my view that the Midwest was not somewhere that I wanted to spend the rest of my life. |
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Hikaru / Website (6.4.07 15:08) ohayo kitsune! hehe. just kidding. i remember when i was still in high school, my classmates gave me a lot of names. one is Powder, from the movie featuring Powder, the giftedly nerd kid who's so fair. Next, they decided naming me Bunny-Moon, or usagi if u like. from the sailormoon series because i was too engrossed with that anime. i hope ur schoolmates didnt give you much of a trouble then. though, personally, i would have preferred calling you Fox. haha... |