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bai-xue:
So one time in my 10th grade English class, we were doing a journalism-related project where we had to look through a newspaper for certain articles and cut them out and study them, I don’t remember exactly why. The teacher brought in a huge stack of newspapers and we all grabbed one and started doing our thing.
I wanna stress that Mr. B was an incredibly chill teacher and was super good, and he really believed that high school students should be encouraged to take responsibility for their education and that teachers should be willing to engage in deep conversations with their classes. He was almost always willing to answer questions. But this ended up proving too much for even poor Mr. B.
Now, I was a precocious little shit, but while reading my newspaper article I came across a phrase that truly confused me: “sodomised with a pine cone.” There was no context in the article which could have told me what this meant. It was 2002 and I had access to the internet, so I knew about the concept itself (and indeed multiple other concepts), but from sheer chance I had just never happened across the word “sodomy” before. This 15-year-old’s bum-related vocabulary went no further than butt-sex, fudge-packing, ass-fucking, or anal if you’re feeling technical.
I read the whole article, then read it again, trying to figure out what in the world had been allegedly done with this pine cone. There was nothing whatsoever to indicate what was involved in being sodomised, especially not with a pine cone. There was only the implication that it was painful, considering a hospital visit was involved.
So, finally, I raised my hand. And poor Mr. B, he called on me.
“Mr. B, what does ‘sodomized’ mean?” I asked.
All my classmates looked up from their newspaper clippings and notebooks, also curious, because apparently none of them had ever heard this word before, either. Mr. B, a man in his thirties with many years of teaching behind him, stood there silently staring back at me, a 15-year-old girl, as twenty other pairs of eyes watched him expectantly. I can only imagine the panic in his brain at that moment.
Finally, he sighed. “Go look it up in the dictionary, Karen.”
I stood and went over to the cabinet in the corner where Mr. B kept a huge copy of the Merriam-Webster. My classmates, meanwhile, started looking in their newspapers for the article that had prompted my question, all of them trying to figure out what it meant to be sodomised with a pine cone.
When I found the word, everything clicked. “Oh, EW,” I burst out. I went straight back to my desk and sat down.
“So? What does it mean?” My classmates asked me.
I looked at Mr. B. He had his head in his hands.
“Go look it up yourselves,” I told them.
A couple kids got up and did just that. When they returned, their faces were grim with the new knowledge of what could be done with a pine cone.
“Well?” The other students asked.
“It’s butt sex,” one of them said solemnly, looking and sounding exactly like someone announcing an incoming nuclear missile.
We all looked at each other, pondering the technicalities of putting a pine cone up your ass.
Then the bell rang, and the incident was never spoken of again.
(Your picture was not posted)
bai-xue:
So one time in my 10th grade English class, we were doing a journalism-related project where we had to look through a newspaper for certain articles and cut them out and study them, I don’t remember exactly why. The teacher brought in a huge stack of newspapers and we all grabbed one and started doing our thing.
I wanna stress that Mr. B was an incredibly chill teacher and was super good, and he really believed that high school students should be encouraged to take responsibility for their education and that teachers should be willing to engage in deep conversations with their classes. He was almost always willing to answer questions. But this ended up proving too much for even poor Mr. B.
Now, I was a precocious little shit, but while reading my newspaper article I came across a phrase that truly confused me: “sodomised with a pine cone.” There was no context in the article which could have told me what this meant. It was 2002 and I had access to the internet, so I knew about the concept itself (and indeed multiple other concepts), but from sheer chance I had just never happened across the word “sodomy” before. This 15-year-old’s bum-related vocabulary went no further than butt-sex, fudge-packing, ass-fucking, or anal if you’re feeling technical.
I read the whole article, then read it again, trying to figure out what in the world had been allegedly done with this pine cone. There was nothing whatsoever to indicate what was involved in being sodomised, especially not with a pine cone. There was only the implication that it was painful, considering a hospital visit was involved.
So, finally, I raised my hand. And poor Mr. B, he called on me.
“Mr. B, what does ‘sodomized’ mean?” I asked.
All my classmates looked up from their newspaper clippings and notebooks, also curious, because apparently none of them had ever heard this word before, either. Mr. B, a man in his thirties with many years of teaching behind him, stood there silently staring back at me, a 15-year-old girl, as twenty other pairs of eyes watched him expectantly. I can only imagine the panic in his brain at that moment.
Finally, he sighed. “Go look it up in the dictionary, Karen.”
I stood and went over to the cabinet in the corner where Mr. B kept a huge copy of the Merriam-Webster. My classmates, meanwhile, started looking in their newspapers for the article that had prompted my question, all of them trying to figure out what it meant to be sodomised with a pine cone.
When I found the word, everything clicked. “Oh, EW,” I burst out. I went straight back to my desk and sat down.
“So? What does it mean?” My classmates asked me.
I looked at Mr. B. He had his head in his hands.
“Go look it up yourselves,” I told them.
A couple kids got up and did just that. When they returned, their faces were grim with the new knowledge of what could be done with a pine cone.
“Well?” The other students asked.
“It’s butt sex,” one of them said solemnly, looking and sounding exactly like someone announcing an incoming nuclear missile.
We all looked at each other, pondering the technicalities of putting a pine cone up your ass.
Then the bell rang, and the incident was never spoken of again.
(Your picture was not posted)
