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Phillip Blanchard · **Posted:** Sun Mar 07, 2004 4:48 am

Alberto and Jasmine are 16-year-old sweethearts, or were until that day in November when Jasmine, who planned to be a virgin until marriage, learned in the halls of DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx that Alberto was "messing around."She raged, she wept and she broke up with him. He apologized, he cried and she took him back. Then she suggested they cut school and have sex â€” "to keep him," she explained tearfully.It could have been one of the oldest stories in the book, except for the real-life ending: Alberto said no.Though he is just one teenager â€” short and freckled, with close-cropped kinky hair, a Hispanic surname and an electric smile â€” his personal decision speaks to the underlying causes of an extraordinary demographic shift. (New York Times)***No, it doesn't.***

Phillip Blanchard · **Posted:** Sun Mar 07, 2004 4:52 am

Toby, lanky and talkative, counts five partners since he lost his virginity in the seventh grade, with a girl his own age: 12. "I wasn't stupid," he insisted. "We did it correctly. We used a condom."***Stop it. Stop it now.***

Phillip Blanchard · **Posted:** Sun Mar 07, 2004 4:54 am

Alberto's favorite class was sex education. One day last fall, he teased Jasmine by saying he wished he were still a sperm inside his father, and that "me and my stupid self would not never have swum up the long tunnel and swam toward the mysterious, great white ball."***Parents, tell your kids: Don't talk to reporters!***

Phillip Blanchard · **Posted:** Sun Mar 07, 2004 4:57 am

Twelve years ago, when Alberto and Jasmine were children, ....***Uh, they're still children.***

Phillip Blanchard · **Posted:** Sun Mar 07, 2004 4:58 am

"From the ground up," Mr. Furstenberg said, "kids are getting quite different signals from the signals that were there 25 years ago."***No, they're not.***

Bumfketeer · **Posted:** Sun Mar 07, 2004 10:36 am

Please stop.

Bumfketeer · **Posted:** Sun Mar 07, 2004 10:40 am

<blockquote>quote:<hr>Originally posted by blanp:
...he teased Jasmine by saying he wished he were still a sperm inside his father, and that "me and my stupid self would not never have swum up the long tunnel and swam toward the mysterious, great white ball."***Parents, tell your kids: Don't talk to reporters!***<hr></blockquote>Actually, there is a good lesson in this idiotic bit of "reportage." Unless it is a politician, of course, there is no obligation to use a quote that makes someone look like a moron. Especially a kid. This quote adds nothing to the story whatsoever.

jjmoney62 · **Posted:** Sun Mar 07, 2004 11:48 am

Stories about teens' answers to surveys about sex or drugs have little or no basis in reality.This is a work of quasi-fiction. It might as well be Uli in the Outback. Can't wait for the corrections and clarifications this week.

jjmoney62 · **Posted:** Sun Mar 07, 2004 11:54 am

And, of course, this paragraph of the "trend" story could have been written in any decade, going back to whenever, by simply changing the genre of music: 
But these teenagers cannot escape mixed messages about sex, or the complications of deciding if, when and how to sample it. They are picking from a new multiple-choice menu, where virginity and oral sex can coexist and erotic rap makes the case for condoms. And between the lines, they are feeling all the old emotional conflicts: jealousy, ambition, loneliness, love.

nstockdale · **Posted:** Sun Mar 07, 2004 12:32 pm

However, with teen pregnancy at its lowest recorded level, you guys will admit that there is a story there, right? Just that it should have been written better?

Phillip Blanchard · **Posted:** Sun Mar 07, 2004 3:10 pm

I agree that the available figures indicate a trend but it's pretty much impossible to supplement the figures with reliable anecdotes. (By available figures, of course, I mean the numbers on pregnancies, live births and abortions, not the results of "sex surveys," which, as jjmoney62 reminded us, are worthless.)

Bumfketeer · **Posted:** Sun Mar 07, 2004 4:30 pm

When asking a teenage boy how many sex partners he has had, rule of thumb is to divide by 5.

Phillip Blanchard · **Posted:** Mon Mar 08, 2004 2:19 am

I guess it's a series.And another thing: You can't identify someone in a story by a partial name (presumably to protect her "privacy," and then run her picture. It's ridiculous.

Phillip Blanchard · **Posted:** Mon Mar 08, 2004 2:22 am

The average teenage girl has a nearly 90 percent chance of getting pregnant during a year when she is having sex without contraception, a study by the Alan Guttmacher Institute shows - a rate that condoms cut to 15 percent and the most effective birth control methods reduce to less than one in 200. ***Let's think about that for a while.***

Jackie · **Posted:** Mon Mar 08, 2004 6:39 pm

<blockquote>quote:<hr>Originally posted by blanp:
I guess it's a series.And another thing: You can't identify someone in a story by a partial name (presumably to protect her "privacy," and then run her picture. It's ridiculous.<hr></blockquote>The Times did that? Oooooh boy. Did they use her full name in the cutline?

Phillip Blanchard · **Posted:** Mon Mar 08, 2004 6:40 pm

<blockquote>quote:<hr>Originally posted by Jackie:
The Times did that? Oooooh boy. Did they use her full name in the cutline?<hr></blockquote>No.

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