I am acutely aware of the many changes in our culture, how what used to be forbidden has become part of living.
Don’t misunderstand me. I don’t miss the old days. I consider myself to be a 21st-century man. However, this afternoon I noticed a sign in front of a building that seemed to slap me in the face.
At the corner of El Dorado Parkway and Craig Street in McKinney, Texas, I saw a sign for the McKinney Independent School District office in charge of “Childcare Services.”
Hmm. I thought. Childcare, eh? I presumed initially that they refer to students who give birth to children and who need to provide care for those little ones while Mommy and/or Daddy are attending public school classes. I have learned that the services are set aside for employees.
You know what? It wouldn’t surprise me in the least that students would be able to use those services, given what I have witnessed on high school campuses over many years. Indeed, times have changed from the long-ago era when I was in high school.
I graduated from high school in Portland, Ore., in the Summer of Love . . . 1967. In those days, student pregnancy was, shall we say, something one didn’t just pass off as one of those “normal occurrences” if you were a student in junior high or high school.
I remember quite vividly one girl who attended the same high school as I did. She got involved in a relationship and — boom! — she became pregnant. When word leaked out that she was “with child,” this girl disappeared from view. She was gone. Never to be seen or heard from again. I have no idea where she went or what happened to her. I always presumed she was shipped off to live with a relative in another state. I hope she lived to grow old like the rest of us.
It’s a good thing that public school systems have pulled their heads out since those dark days when girls and their sexual partners were scorned. Yes, underage girls and boys have been producing babies since the beginning of time.
As one might say: Stuff happens, man.
Every so often, though, one gets reminders of how our culture has evolved over time. It reminds us of how it used to be . . . and it makes glad we live in the here and now.
