Last year when my 9th graders were reading Romeo and Juliet I had a student ask a rather peculiar question. We had read the scene including Romeo & Juliet's wedding during class the previous day and then watched a clip of the 1996 film with Leo DiCaprio and Claire Danes. My student, a 14-year-old girl, asked out of the blue, "Did they have condoms in Romeo and Juliet's time?"
Me: Excuse me?
Student: Did they have condoms back then?
Me: No, I don't think they did.
Student: So Juliet's pregnant.
Me: Excuse me?
Student: She's pregnant.
Me: Why do you say that?
Student: Well they had sex.
Me: Well it is not stated directly in the play, but they got married, yes, so we can assume...
Student: So she's pregnant.
It may be important to mention that I knew at the time that this particular student's mother had just had a large 30th birthday celebration (yes - do the math), so I wasn't exactly keen on telling her that people don't necessarily get pregnant every time they have sex, but what was I supposed to do? I definitely considered lying and saying that yes, Juliet was absolutely preggo and that just proves how important contraception is, but I think I settled on something along the lines of, "You should really discuss that with your health teacher when you see him tomorrow and we'll never really know about Juliet because she dies before anyone even knows she's married!"
Teenagers makes the strangest leaps of understanding...
No comments:
Post a Comment