Porn in the Classroom

I remember the exact day my innocence was taken away from me. After that day I would never look at the adults around me the same way. Today, I feel like I did that to some one else.

Some advice, if you are a business that donates old computers to underprivileged schools, please be courteous and erase all your porn files before handing the equipment to minors. But I will get in to that later…

Back to when I lost my innocence.

My early childhood was spent mostly in North Hollywood, where I would go to my uncle’s wax museum on Hollywood Boulevard every day after school. Tourists, hookers and coke-snorting clowns, surrounded me. And I mean REAL clowns with make up and bendy-balloon things, not like “the people I work with are clowns.” But considering all that, I still grew up innocent. I wasn’t even exposed to Barbie and her huge plastic breasts. My world was all about Mickey Mouse and bubbles and ice cream.

Then when I was 8, my parents brought me to an even safer more innocent little suburb outside of Philly called Upper Darby. Although the neighborhood was diverse culturally, it was no Hollywood. Most of the kids in my school were either children of immigrants, or white trash. And everyone first learned about sex at a) home, b) school or c) the streets.

I got my sex education from the most ironic place, the Hare Krishna Temple. And not from the priest, but from a bored little girl outside. It was a beautiful summer day and my parents were inside the temple in Mount Airy. I was on the swing set going as high as I could and this smiling little girl joined me. She was only a year or two older, but so much wiser. We talked about school and I am not sure how the topic came up, but out of nowhere, I noticed the momentum of her swing decreasing, dirt rising under her sandals, and her voice quieting down. I had the feeling in my stomach that she was about to say something important and serious.

She looks at me directly in the eye and goes “Hey, do you know what S-E-X is?” I have never been asked a question so personal before. But I nod yes. Then she goes “What IS it?”

“You know” I say. “It means being naked and kissing someone at the same time.” She laughs maniacally. “No!” Then she gets off her swing and whispers everything she knows on the topic in my ear. “Eeeew! That’s gross!” Then I remember running away and telling my parents that I want to go home. I was quiet the whole car ride home.

I didn’t really believe her. But that same week, two shocking things happened. First thing: My best-neighborhood-friend’s house burned down. A few days after the incident we walked through the house and helped her family look for things to keep and things to throw away. Her uncle probably thought no one would ever rummage through his stuff, but who prepares for their house to burn down? So that brings me to the second shocking thing: Looking at my first porn magazine. So just like your mother says “Always wear clean underwear because you never know when you are going to get into an accident” Space Cadet says “Always destroy your porn stash if you are living in a house with minors because you never know when your house is going to burn down.” It was weird, everything else … his bed frame, desk, newspapers were all burned. But all the porn mags survived. They are like cockroaches I guess.

I remember going through about five magazines, mainly white girls and Korean girls. We were disgusted but couldn’t look away. That was the day that changed me. Now pornography is much easier to access, and way raunchier.

But never did I think that it was gonna be in my classroom. We got a good, working computer about a few weeks ago. It has no Internet. So no worries, right? That’s what I thought.

The kids love playing Dora the Explorer games, Paint It, and simply typing. Today the slow kid with the speech impediment, started playing around with the computer and randomly clicking around. I was close by, but distracted by another student. Then I hear Speech Impediment go “Eeeeew! Naaasty!” and then the extremely talkative naughty kid of the class walked by and exclaimed “Ew! She’s kissing his pee pee!”

I became stone-like. Was this really happening? I couldn’t move. And this wasn’t something that could be misinterpreted as art or cultural anthropology. This was hard-core blow job action in mpeg format. The other teacher walked by and quickly covered the screen with her hands. We tried to restrain our laughter, and tried to get serious. She turned the screen off (but the computer was still on), and said “the computer center is closed.” And of course, the boys snuck back and I quickly turned around and saw a tanned bottom bouncing up and down. I was mortified.

We shut the computer down and tried to distract everyone by talking about dinosaurs.

First it was shocking, then it was funny, and then I felt extremely guilty. Did I take these boys’ innocence away? Will they forget what they saw? Will they tell their moms what they learned in school today? I don’t know. I guess I’ll find out tomorrow.