25 years ago today I was getting ready to graduate fro 8th grade, listening to REO Speedwagon, playing Super Sox softball, getting ready to go to a 2 week summer "horse camp" and generally going on about my early teen years with not much more to worry about than keeping my zits under control and wondering what the next Journey album would sound like.
Meanwhile, there was a horrible and incurable disease that was just beginning to be talked about. I don't remember hearing the word AIDS until my Freshman year in high school. At that time it was thought to be a "gay man's disease." It didn't seem like it was going to impact my world as I knew it, but it sounded horrible and frightening none the less.
25 years and 25 million deaths later, it is now a very different story. I don't know anyone personally who has died from AIDS and I think that is more a stroke of luck than anything. For me, it has highlighted how differently people are viewed if they are white and relatively affluent and straight. If AIDS was gripping Europe or America the way it is devastating Africa, the world community would be doing more about it. I know that there are other issues at play there, lack of infrastructure and education etc, however I still think that it would be a different story on a different continent.
AIDS has shaped how we talk to our children about sex. It is no longer just about birth control and treatable VD. It is about life and death. We didn't get that when I was a teen because we still thought that AIDS was only a threat if you were a gay man. Now it is the #1 thing I fear about my teen aged boys having sex. I wonder, though, if the kids today don't see AIDS as just another disease. They have grown up knowing that Magic Johnson has HIV and he seems to have bee doing just fine for quite a long time now. Although I am thrilled for Mr. Johnson, I think that stories like his have lulled our kids into a false sense that it not that big of a deal. I sure hope I'm way off the mark on this one.
Anyway, to those of you whose lives have been touched by AIDS, in whatever sense, my heart is with you. I continue to be frightened of the cruelness of the way the disease progresses and ultimately kills its victims.
Yes, it has changed how we talk to our children about sex, and STDs is a subject that has to be talked about, too. Later ages of marrying and a change in the cultural taboo about promiscuity has meant more health dangers to teach our children about...
Cheers.
Posted by: H.A. Page | June 06, 2006 at 03:38 PM