We have a new flat mate. He is 21 and seems to pretty nice. After carefully choosing him from a choice of three he should be, too. Oh my, maybe I should have gone for the 43 year old or given my vote for the awfully chatty one!? No, I think in the end my choice was right.
However you should have seen my face when I was cooking yesterday and he came up behind me starting our conversation with: "Hey, you are a biologist, right?"
This question always makes me wary. When people say this to me I never know where they are going with it. All I know is there is another question coming. You would not believe what people think a biology student (I am not a biologist yet after all) should know. Like my mom, who told me once that because I am a biologist I should know all the Es food companies put into their products.
So when my new flat mate asked me that question I prepared for whatever might be coming next.
Only I wasn't prepared at all for what hit me with after my cautious "Yes."
Instead of asking me what I wanted to do after my graduation (which seems so far away right now I can't even say it’s in sight) or even any study related question, Mr. Flatmate asked, during what time of her cycle a girl was most likely to get pregnant.
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| From BZgA, who make some of the best condom advertisement ever! |
I must have stood there dumbfounded, my hand on the rolling pin, for 30 seconds or something. My mouth probably hung open and my eyes darted wildly to all sides.
Maybe I should find a single apartment. Sometimes I feel like a mom here these days. Now I don't only get kid-questions from Ms. Flatmate and have to explain to Mrs. Flatmate (she is the oldest of my flat mates that's why I am calling her Mrs. Not because she is married. Not that I know of anyhow.) how life here works in general, no, now I also get to do sexual education.
Not that I mind telling him, but really!? When is a girl most likely to get pregnant? What do parents and teachers teach their children these days? When he went on talking and I was still trying to wrap my mind around the question it sounded as if he believed a girl could not (just could not) get pregnant shortly after her period.
At that point I was two seconds from banging my head against a wall (or smashing his with a rolling pin).
Instead I smiled sweetly and said calmly: " If the girl is not on the pill her cycle can be irregular so you can never tell when her ovulation starts." Stanger things have happened then a girl getting pregnant at the 'wrong' time of the month.
I know he has been in England for a year, but Great Britain is hardly located behind the moon, or am I that geographically challenged? So how can he not know this? Didn't he read Bravo or something? Maybe it is a girl's magazine. So what? Obviously guys should read it too! Dr. Sommer would definitely be a great help to them as well. Or someone should start a magazine that deals with those topics for boys.
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| Source: BZgA |
Though I until now I believed every semi-intelligent teenager would already know this. Obviously I was wrong. If he knew better he would hardly have asked. Either he already did something stupid or he was planning to. I tip on the former, but hope for the later. I really don't know what makes people believe this won't happen to me. It's like with cancer: It can happen to anyone. You can just minimize the odds.
To tell the trust, I wanted to shout at him to just be smart and use FREAKING condoms! Then I decided that I was not his mother and I didn't know him long enough to be so crude.
Maybe I should start a sex consulting business. Or I could start that magazine on sexual education. Damn, I really need to find a way to make this into money.
