Unicycling along the canal lunchtime, with my jogging companion, we passed three young boys fishing. My friend says
“Caught anything lads?”
Quick as a flash, the reply, from a lad who might have been about 12 years old:
“Yeah, syphilis”.
I was so surprised that I fell off.
Can’t be many people who have UPD’d because of an STD.
Nao
hahahaha, that is pretty funny
he’s been waiting years for someone to ask him thta, then he finally got to pull it off.
hahahaha
he was probably just pretending to fish! then waited for weeks and weeks until someone asked him
You’d probably catch syphilis (or worse!) from fishing in the Glasgow canals!
T.
As the father of a 12 year old girl, I find that story more than a little disturbing.
Don’t worry, he’s in England.
Seriously though, it amazes me how having a daughter completely changes your world. I was fortunate enough to have two, and now while they are young, it is great. Ten years from now, it will be hell. At least that is what I am preparing for.
How old are they?
Agreed: good to know that their “sex education” has at least mentioned disease.
However this incident was in one of the poorer areas of Manchester. The casual observer would not be blamed here for suspecting, from visual evidence alone, that any teenage girl not already pushing a pram, is visibly pregnant. I think I read that Clamidia levels in teenagers in Manchester hovers around 1 in 14. Very worrying.
Nao
“Sex education” takes place in many places. When I was a kid we played “cooties” a version of tag where the person who is it has “cooties”, children’s undefined source of yuckiness. When I lived in Chicago I remember passing a group of kids in the 5 to 6 year old range, too young to have experienced formal “sex education” and they were playing herpes, same said game of tag, but the person who was it had herpes.
Point being there’s really no telling how this kid learned of syphilis, what it is or how you catch it.
better knowledgable than ignorant.
Exactly, that’s why I used the quotes.
Nao
19 mos and 5 years. We went over to Munipsycho’s to go swimming at their neighborhood pool, and cookout yesterday. My 5 year old, walked over to the low diving board and jumped off. Never having been on one. No coaxing, no suggesting, nothing. Then about 20 minutes later, she hops in the line for the high dive. She jumps off without any hesitation! Minutes earlier Jeffrey and I had been talking about whether or not we had to be coaxed since there was a girl about 8 years old standing on the end of the high dive for 10-15 minutes being coaxed by friends, family and onlookers. I had mentioned that I never needed to be coaxed into anything like that. My oldest daughter is too much like me, 10 years from now will be hell.
Okay, was it clearly syphallis? or could it have been something else and you just misunderstood?
Yeah, OK, I missed that subtelty. Sorry.
haha i would fall off my uni too if a 12 year old told me that
That’ll teach him to dress for the occation next time.
Long ago when I was 12 you would have been far away before we had gathered the courage to say something like that.
The boys probably have been referring on their mobile phone to a webpage full of responses to people who ask questions of Tom Sawyer-ish boys out fishing in the canal. After they’ve heard the same question,
“Catch anything yet?”
a million times, they’ve decided not to answer for the millionth time with the proper answer, which would be something like,
“We’re out here fishing, yes, but our real intention here is not to fish, but to form bonds of friendship that will last us through thick and thin for the rest of our lives, to exercise our imagination in pretending that H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds is actually taking place, and to develop our senses of observation and memory recall by an informal competition in remembering as many species of the local flora and fauna as possible. So whether we have caught anything yet is irrelevant. However, we will answer the literal question you have asked if you’d like.”
Instead, they are choosing from the list using a random number generated by the 6th and 7th places in their instantaneous geolocation as determined by the Global Positioning System, and the list element that popped up for your riding party was # 341: “Syphilus”.
An interesting theory, yet I will stick with what another has already suggested. A prepared answer designed to shock.
Nao
Alot more than you’d think, actually. STD is one of the toughest mountain bike trails that Northstar has to offer. I’ve never seen anyone clean the whole thing, not even Kris Holm.