Tales from the Arcade III: More Smoking...and Teen Pregnancy?! (That's Three, Articuno!)

Chances are that you'll remember the posts I made about the arcade and the smoking business I saw there. Today, there was yet more smoke about, and since my throat was not cooperating I was rather indignant about going to hang around them, especially when they barraged me with a good round of trivia. I'd been known around the town for knowing who was the president in which order, and I'm surprised I've been able to hang on to that in the summer.

However, trivia was not what I'd come home to blog about; neither was it wholly the smoking and the ability of street officers to miss one of the thirteen-year-old girls carrying into the arcade a pack of Marlboro menthols. This was about a sixteen-year-old that I was unfamiliar with, bantering with the rest of the lot. It eventually got down to where one of the girls made a joke of being 'two days pregnant' and everyone began rubbing her abdomen. A few minutes later, one of the boys went over to this unfamiliar sixteen-year-old and began blowing on her abdomen. When I edged in closer, I could see the abdomen portruding quite a bit and everyone was soon rubbing it — she was pregnant.

Now, I had known two other pregnant teens in my entire life. The first was in my school and was taken out (shortly before the baby project!) in April; her baby shower coincided with my turn to do the baby project. The second was outside the school by the poles when the buses arrived and was seldom seen by me within. I'd talked to a friend online about it, when I was under the impression that it was just an anomaly, but she asserted me that it was nearly everywhere she went (mind you, she lives in southern Devon). When I first took a course on birth control, I was merely told that there was an alarming teen pregnancy rate and I thus decided not to get in the mix by having sex so fast — but it didn't really hit me until I saw it happening twice at a secure school. The third time, now, was the charm. It was real, all right. What worried me, though, was that this sixteen-year-old was around cigarette smoke and a mere four months along. (Good for the older girl having a hormonal patch in sight when she was taking her drag!)

With this in mind next to the party held at a neighbour's house prior to a concert in which nearly everyone, aged 15 to 20, was either drinking beer or smoking a cigarette — which leads me to believe that Brigantine is going to the dogs at the same rate as the rest of the nation — I think I'll have a whole litany to read off when I go up to Rhode Island in...three days already!