How Far Do You Let It Go?
Ministerial Meandering
How far do you let it go?
Sheila was trying to shock me at breakfast the other day. She likes to read news items on her phone, and interrupt me reading my Economist by telling me about them. Apparently, there was a group of school girls - around the age of 12, so into puberty, I would guess - who were ‘taken camping’, ostensibly under the supervision of a teacher or two.
These youngsters were already adept at vaping in the school toilets, and the myriad opportunities for more exciting experiments on a camping trip were simply too many to pass up.
I don’t recall the number of the group that were allocated this particularly sinful cabin in the woods, but according to your reporter, the door of the cabin had barely swung shut when the whoopee gummies appeared and disappeared into the waiting mouths of willing recipients. No doubt the vapes were enveloping them all in hazy clouds of intoxicating warmth as well. It didn’t take long before sex games were being played and entered into with what is reported as abandon. (Is there any other way to play sex games, I have to ask?)
No supervision - it would appear - was evident, allowing the girls free rein to experiment ad libitum, which is what they did. Until they were discovered - which had to happen, or Sheila would not have interrupted my reading, and I wouldn’t be writing this now.
I felt obliged to find a shocked response - although I couldn’t match the horror of my wife - but at the same time I couldn’t really say that I was either surprised or disturbed that much. I could say that I thought supervision might have been closer at hand, as this was a camping site presumably open to the public, and therefore the girls were at risk of uninvited and unwelcome visitors - other than their teachers. That was really the only risk of any magnitude that caused me any concern - or that one stoned, adolescent girl might wander off into the woods and meet with disaster of some sort there. An enclosure would have been useful; electric fence - or some such.
Other than that petit cause des soucis, I thought back on my days at boarding school at the same age, and tried to think if I and my friends had been in any way different. Sexual experimentation is normal at that age, and being prudish and hypocritical about it serves no-one. I remember my sister telling me once that our Mum had only told her not to indulge her fantasies in the living room.
It has been heartening to see that over the past decades since the end of WWII, the topic of sex has finally crept past whispers behind the back of the hand, and into an acceptable place in dinner conversation. Much of this has to do with the arrival of the contraceptive pill and female sexual emancipation, finally giving autonomy to women for their own behaviour and fertility. We even have university degrees in ‘Sexology’ now - unheard of in the 1950’s.
As for the camping trip, I might reasonably criticise the lack of oversight - as, apparently, no teacher could be found for some time. That would constitute a neglect of adequate care to me, and a fault to be clearly laid before the school’s governing board. As for their actual behaviour, I would not wish the girls to be told that it was wrong or sinful - rather risky and inappropriate, particularly if some of their group were made uncomfortable by it. Call me old-fashioned - but I’m just glad they weren’t spending their time cross-dressing and pretending to be boys.
Philip+