May 2020
Did you know you could get pregnant sitting on a park bench? That’s what we were told – yes, really! A kind of scary verbal contraceptive for pre-pubescent girls. Back in NZ in the 1960s.
Now, as adults, we’re being alerted to another danger from park benches – the risk of catching something else - the corona virus.
policing precautions
At least we weren’t arrested for sitting on a park bench like a woman in Bristol during lock down recently. She told police she was ‘exercising her mind,’ but clearly she wasn’t taking the necessary precautions. And that included ‘touching the bench’ and ‘not sanitising her hands afterwards.’ I’m ever so glad I’m now an adult otherwise it could be confusing.
was it the park bench?
I don’t think that’s how I got pregnant at 17 but I can’t be sure. We had virtually no sex education and you couldn’t get contraception unless you were married. I think condoms were available if your boyfriend had the courage to ask for them. I thought I was lucky ‘cos my boyfriend had a Saturday job in Boots. So sometimes something for the weekend.
moral madness
We often sat on a park bench overlooking the sea – the same place where I told my boyfriend I was pregnant. Long before I told my parents. Then I was sent away in disgrace, banished. That was my punishment for bringing shame on the family. Shame so powerful that all acts of parental duty were suddenly flung aside – cast off along with me and the baby - in this moral madness that gripped the mindsets of our parents back then.
locked down
Some things like park benches stay locked down in your mind, and associations with certain things and places never dissolve – even decades later. The bench is still there, the boyfriend is still there, the loss of our daughter is still there.
To find out more about me and my memoir ’A Sense of Something Lost’ go to my link on Amazon:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B084GFG6WS/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0
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