God Says No to Drugs

One of the side effects of having school early in the day seems to be that I feel like the day is over at noon. I'm so used to night classes where I just go home, have a drink, dinner, and a movie and then go to bed.

When I left class to-day, I walked down a quiet corridor where only a young, pretty woman with long red hair was sitting on a bench. As I walked past she abruptly laughed and said, "I was just going to tell you to suck your own dick!" I looked at her and her glazed eyes suggested maybe she had a Bluetooth hidden in her hair. I'm still not entirely sure.

You know, there was a time when the explanation for someone talking to herself in public, "She had a blue tooth," would have sounded about as crazy as the behaviour itself.

This was my second day of Health Education, the class I took for a P.E. credit because it required no exercise. It really feels like the school decided to punish the students who would rather not run and jump and play outside because the class so far feels like some of the things I've heard about happening in rehab. The instructor began with defining "stupid" as actions taken despite knowing they will be harmful or futile. She then told us about how smoking causes cancer, told us about the burden placed on society by obesity along with the detriments to the health of the individual. She went over the benefits and drawbacks of going cold turkey or slowly weaning oneself off addictive substances, psychological factors related to addiction like denial and enabling social circles. She talked about how all weight loss techniques discussed in class would be scientifically verified before moving to another section where she held forth on the importance of "spiritual health", the importance of recognising the existence of a higher power. She's instructed us to line up on both sides of her desk every day for the rest of the semester and, one at a time, to say our last names followed by the first three letters in our last names.

Going over factors in our lives which we can't control that are related to specific health risks she discussed age and gender (not sex) before breezing past sexual orientation, mentioning it but not explaining why it necessarily entailed health risks.

She says herself she's strict, lecturing us at some length on the difference between "strict" and "mean". The syllabus came with a contract we were required to turn in signed to-day with individual items checked in reference to our agreement to never be late to class, never cheat on tests, never leave electronic devices on in the classroom, etcetera. A student showed up late to-day and as she walked in the door the instructor said, "Haven't you learned how to tell time?" before adding, "That's strict, not mean, because I know her." The student quietly sat down.

Glancing through the text book now, I see a chapter which appears to be basic sex education featuring labelled illustrations of genitalia; I see a chapter about eliminating or reducing the presence of drugs in my life. I see one chapter about grains and complex carbohydrates so maybe this class will be slightly less depressingly useless than my interpersonal communication class.