Monkeys, Puppies, and Pocketbooks

Three girls suspended from school for uttering the V-word. VAGINA. Come on, now.

When my friend, Em, told me about this, my first thought was this must be another of those urban legends. You know, like the one that claims a certain fried chicken place puts a male contraceptive in its batter to keep the black birth rate down.

But, no, I looked it up myself. The Onion didn’t make this one up. It really happened. Three sixteen year-old-girls participating in a literary forum at John Jay High School in New York state read a passage from "The Vagina Monologues" and actually used that most powerful word.


Incensed, my friend Em demanded, "What were the girls suppose to call it, my thing-a-ma-gig, my good girl, the mysterious delta of my love, or sing-song it like Mary Poppins-- one of my boyfriend's favorite things?"

We didn’t have that problem when I was a wee thing in Tucker, Arkansas. Well-raised, little, Negro children knew boys peed from their puppies, girls from their monkeys, and their mama’s had a big ole pocket book to do whatever she had to do.

Get some burqas for those girls, and send them down to Tucker to spend some time with my kinfolk.