Yes, Kindergartners Should Have Condoms

A national stink has been created by the School Board in Provincetown’s recent decision to allow children as young as five access to condoms without their parents’ permission. As a frequent visitor to Provincetown, I have a few thoughts on the matter that might be different from the standard take. I think we should definitely hand out condoms to young kids. Here’s what they might do with them:

1. Make Water Balloons
In the 1970’s, in my early teens I founded an environmental group for kids with the grandiose title, Society for the Prevention of Environmental Corruption. We met on Saturdays in a Drug Rehab Center/Free University called Everyday People, in the same room that the Sex Education class met. One Saturday, bored with talk of saving the planet, or at least with plans to clean up Hinkson Creek, we poked around our room and opened one of the closets where we found a trove of sex education paraphernalia, mostly condoms and birth controls pills. We broke out the birth control pills and most of us, boys and girls alike, popped a couple each, pretending to be high (it was the 70’s, after all), then broke out the condoms and filled them with water. A popular fish and chips place next door, Alfie’s, had a lunch rush going on. Perched in the windows of the second floor of Everyday People, we shouted in unison at a group of college kids making their way to the restaurant. “Look up! “ They did and then we rained down upon them as if from heaven the giant distended condoms.
I only wish that Columbia, Missouri and Roger the Youth Minister (who ran Everyday People) had been as progressive about condoms then as Provincetown is now. It would have been so much nicer for me if Roger had simply said, “Not that I approve, but I suppose that none of your parents need to know about the condoms.”

2. Trade Them for Candy
A couple of years ago, I was in Provincetown with my wife and four daughters during the annual Mardi Gras celebration, which in Ptown is celebrated in August. The theme that year was the Wild, Wild West. The floats lumbered by to deafening music as men and women in cow folk regalia threw beads and candy and drag queens dressed like Miss Kitty and her girls waved at the enthusiastic crowd from convertibles. Mardi Gras beads rained upon us, and soon my daughters were draped in them. Then the Bacardi Float passed sporting bare-chested men dressed in tight shorts, cowboy hats and boots. They tossed handfuls of packets to us and my five-year-old Shoshie dove for them. Some sweet treat?
They were not. They were condoms.
A young dancer appeared in our midst and knelt beside Shoshie, “Hi, what’s your name?” he asked.
She told him without a hint of shyness.
“Oh, that’s a nice name, but you’re too young for this, sweetheart” and he gently took the condom from her. “Here, have some candy.” She took some, thanking him, just as I had taught. Always thank the stranger when he takes the condom and gives you candy instead.

3. Put them on Sticks
Years ago, I read a story about a village in a country (I forget which) with a population problem that was visited by a social worker who talked to the villagers about birth control. He handed out condoms to the men and told them how they could prevent their wives from having more babies. Demonstrating how to put on a condom, he placed a condom on a stick. “When you have relations with your wife, you put the condom on and you won’t have babies.”
A year later when he returned, the men complained that the method had not worked at all, though they had all followed the social worker’s instructions precisely. To prove it, they led him to a field covered in sticks draped in condoms.
The villagers of course were not stupid. They were simply following the instructions of the health worker. They had no other context for condoms.
Neither do five-year olds.
Not many five year olds would ask for condoms, but I wonder so what if they do? Condoms are good for grownups, a really good idea for sexually active teens, and best of all for five year olds, who are more inventive than the rest of us. I plan to give a dozen to my now seven-year-old daughter Shoshie and tell her to go wild, to do whatever she wants with them. Personally, I think she’ll still prefer candy.