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Show Why We Cry Butch and Fenn Stories 13 7 of Ladies Home Journal for a while now. My mother cuts them out and puts them on my bureau. They're about things like "Surviving the Troublesome Teens" and "The Six Teenage Dangers." I try not to touch them. I don't move them or go near my bureau top while they're up there. After four or five days they disappear. My mother and I have never talked about them, nor have I ever seen her place them or take them away. The last one was titled: "what Teenagers Want to Know About SEX." The word "SEX" was stencilled in red block letters on a picture of a big wooden crate, the kind they must keep dynamite in. It scares the shit out of me that they print things like that in magazines; what are they trying to do, embarrass everybody in the whole world? For that week, I gave my bureau plenty of room. I didn't change my underwear for three days and when the article disappeared, I finally felt free to sleep late the next day. Standing there with one leg in my shorts I see something new on the old bureau. A pamphlet. It's open a little the other way so I can't see what ft isT picking it upT I read: Understanding Puberty. Oh my God. I drop it like a firecracker. What a word: puberty. It should be in the pledge of allegiance: "with puberty and justice for all." The truth is: I don't even know exactly what it is. They showed a film last year to all the girls while the boys were kept in Mr. Donaldson's class. Mr. Donaldson wouldn't tell us what the |
