Growing up, we don’t really think about normal. Everything is black and white, and while children are generally curious and question everything, they just assume their “normal” is universal.
That’s how I was, at least until I came to college last year.
As a teenager, like many, I thought I knew everything. I read the news; I was “worldly.”
At the University of Maryland, I quickly learned my little world in Stafford County, Virginia was not a reflection of the global community. I was, pardon the pun, shell-shocked. (Just kidding, that was an awesome pun.)
Sure, there were plenty of new people (I had known only four Jewish kids my whole life) and plenty of places to spend money (GrubHub), but the thing that shocked me most was how close-minded I had been.
My family always considered ourselves progressive for our hometown, but even so, I was sheltered and didn’t know it.
Perhaps the clue was the people taking homecoming pictures with their ATVs or bringing their freshly killed deer to school in their pickups, but it really should have been the amount of girls in my high school that couldn’t finish their education because they got pregnant.
Apparently, that’s not normal, because it’s also not normal to teach abstinence as the only form of birth control in public schools.
Really?
Girls were shamed for their pregnancies and usually ended up leaving school, and yes, I was as guilty of gossiping as anyone.
But chances are, some girls never knew the risks of their actions. Sure, there were condoms by the cash register of every gas station, but did they even know how to use them?
Probably not, because here’s a complete summary of my public school sexual education:
Plus some pictures of infected body parts that did not remotely resemble human genitalia.
Once I got to school and realized birth control is actually a normal (there’s that word again) thing Maryland kids (and Pennsylvania kids and New Jersey kids, etc.) learn, I felt awful for all those girls from home who never had the chance. I never even thought about the sheer ignorance from lack of education, preferring to label them “easy,” like everyone else.
I now realize where I come from, in some aspects at least, is a little backward. Now, I try to be more open to the people I meet, because I have no idea where or what they’ve come from.
It isn’t easy, as humans, to withhold judgment, but it’s important to realize that your normal is not the normal others experienced.
