Gee, Spaw, ya sure know how to get a gyrl all worked up! Really beautifully written, darlin'. Reminds me of the dance we went to from the Mducat Juke Joint, wasn't it? Oops! Does Karen know about that?**BG**

This all came at the close of the 60's for me and I ended up the way of Peter's friend, except that I had never even heard of abortion so didn't even know if it was or was not an option.(I later found out it wasn't available in Colorado. Someone I knew wound up going to New Mexico for a legal *D&C*.)

I do remember not wanting to do the parallel bars and such in gym class and hating our macho gym teacher because she was a bitch about it. I was expected to leave school, which I did, in the middle of my next to last year. I completed that year, with a home teacher. I was suddenly married at 16, a mother at barely 17; my last year of high school never to be.

I do not regret this, though, and have never wished it otherwise. Truth be known, I loved all of the making out, esp. in his 1963 Ford Galaxie convertible, esp. out in the desert in the middle of winter, with the high Rocky Mountain sun warming up our bodies, while the cold air teased certain parts of mine to attention. The main thing that was different for me, by then, from what Spaw has portrayed, is I knew that I wanted IT as much as he did and I made no secret about it. I didn't care if I was considered easy, a slut or anything else. In fact I announced to him, that I thought "god had invented sex to be enjoyed!"

Later on, it seemed this insistent urge might not have all been hormonal to me; when I learned about reincarnation and such, it seemed romantic at the least, divinely ordained at the best, to believe my son was knocking on the door, so to speak, urging us to *plant the seed* that would become the wonderful, loving child he is.

I went on with no stigma, even though it was not the common thing it seems to be, today, for girls to get preggers in high school. I did also go on to champion the right of girls to know about and have available birth control, so they needn't go through what Peter's friend did.

I don't know how they do it these days, because quite frankly the fear of pregnancy seems mild to me, compared to the fear of AIDS, human papiloma virus (which caused cervical cancer in my oldest daughter, from her very first sexual experience,) hepatitis, and all of the other STDs out there. I know there is some romance left because she, my son, and I have talked about it. I made sure they were armed with as much information as they wanted and needed. Unfortunately for her, she still wanted to believe in the good of someone she didn't know very well and let him talk her into not using a condom. I guess some things never changed, eh?