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Megan was the subject of a Post front-page story Sunday revealing that some city kids - including girls at Holy Child - play a strange game called "Snap" where girls wear bracelets and rings of different colors and boys try to rip them off.
If a boy succeeds, he gets a coupon from the girl promising to perform whatever sex act the color stands for. Black, for example, represents sexual intercourse.
-- Andy Geller for The New York Post
They grow up so fast these days...
___ ___ ___
May 25, 2004 -- A 11-year-old Queens fifth-grader was booted from her Catholic elementary school for blowing the whistle on a bizarre sex-bracelets game.
"I'm happy. I hate that school," a defiant Megan Stecher said after learning that Holy Child Jesus School in Richmond Hill won't let her return next year. "I only have five friends in the whole year."
Megan said getting the boot was unfair, but her mother, Michelle, 33, was much angrier.
"I'm outraged," she declared.
Michelle said school officials claimed she slandered Holy Child by allowing her daughter to be photographed by The Post in front of it wearing bracelets and rings that represent different sex acts.
"I didn't slander anybody," said Michelle, after her daughter's expulsion was reported on Fox News. "But what they did today - throwing my daughter out of school - that's slander."
Megan was the subject of a Post front-page story Sunday revealing that some city kids - including girls at Holy Child - play a strange game called "Snap" where girls wear bracelets and rings of different colors and boys try to rip them off.
If a boy succeeds, he gets a coupon from the girl promising to perform whatever sex act the color stands for. Black, for example, represents sexual intercourse.
Michelle said she allowed her daughter to be interviewed because "I wanted parents to know that if it's happening in Catholic schools, its happening in public schools and it's happening everywhere. Half the school does it."
Yesterday, the bracelets hit the fan.
Sister Diane Androvich, the principal, called Megan and her mother in and said the girl would be allowed to take her final exams this year, but wouldn't be allowed back next year, the family said.
"They said I did an un-Christian thing," Michelle said. "They said if there was a problem, I should have reported it to them first. But I feel I was right to let other parents know what their children are doing."
School officials did not return calls for comment.
-- Andy Geller for The New York Post
EDIT: Thanks to a Blurty friend, I decided to check this out at Snopes.com, and it seems that the story may be too good to be true, at least with respect to what one wanted to read in it. See?
___ ___ ___
Yet it is not solely romantic yearnings and social awkwardness that give wings to such rumors — burgeoning sexual desire also plays its part. Boys caught up in the throes of hormonal tumult fervently pray for easy access to sex, so such a rumor falls upon their ears like rain on a parched field. Likewise, girls at that same stage are trying to come to terms with their impulses. One of the ways they do so is by abdicating responsibility for their urges to someone or something else, leaving them to preserve a particular view of themselves. The concept of being required to have sex would hold certain appeal because such obligation would take the decision out of their hands. The notion that a "sex coupon" could compel them to act out their desires gives them a way to vicariously explore lust while at the same time remaining a "good girl" in that there is no admission (internal or otherwise) of sexual hankerings.
The parents of thirty years ago were not going batty over "sex coupons" the way today's parents are over "sex bracelets" because they hadn't heard about them. Ignorance of their children's wacky belief cushioned them in a way that is no longer possible in our current media-saturated world. While it is true kids of the new millennium have a harder time holding on to their innocence, so too do their parents.
Since writing our original article, we've heard from hundreds of folks. The adults who've written almost always say their kids are never going to wear those bracelets again. On the other hand, almost without exception, the middle- and high-school kids from all across the US. express shock that the adults would think they were actually obeying this "code" and disappointment in their elders for failing to understand the bracelets are no more than a cool fashion accessory that has attracted a silly rumor. Yes, many kids had heard the rumor before the media threw it at them (and many hadn't), but even to those exposed to this snippet of lore in the wild (i.e., those that heard it from their friends as an item of schoolyard lore rather than gleaned it from the headlines of the day), this was nothing more than a giddy "everybody knows" fact, right up there with "Bubble Yum contains spider eggs."
-- Snopes Report
.
Megan was the subject of a Post front-page story Sunday revealing that some city kids - including girls at Holy Child - play a strange game called "Snap" where girls wear bracelets and rings of different colors and boys try to rip them off.
If a boy succeeds, he gets a coupon from the girl promising to perform whatever sex act the color stands for. Black, for example, represents sexual intercourse.
-- Andy Geller for The New York Post
They grow up so fast these days...
___ ___ ___
May 25, 2004 -- A 11-year-old Queens fifth-grader was booted from her Catholic elementary school for blowing the whistle on a bizarre sex-bracelets game.
"I'm happy. I hate that school," a defiant Megan Stecher said after learning that Holy Child Jesus School in Richmond Hill won't let her return next year. "I only have five friends in the whole year."
Megan said getting the boot was unfair, but her mother, Michelle, 33, was much angrier.
"I'm outraged," she declared.
Michelle said school officials claimed she slandered Holy Child by allowing her daughter to be photographed by The Post in front of it wearing bracelets and rings that represent different sex acts.
"I didn't slander anybody," said Michelle, after her daughter's expulsion was reported on Fox News. "But what they did today - throwing my daughter out of school - that's slander."
Megan was the subject of a Post front-page story Sunday revealing that some city kids - including girls at Holy Child - play a strange game called "Snap" where girls wear bracelets and rings of different colors and boys try to rip them off.
If a boy succeeds, he gets a coupon from the girl promising to perform whatever sex act the color stands for. Black, for example, represents sexual intercourse.
Michelle said she allowed her daughter to be interviewed because "I wanted parents to know that if it's happening in Catholic schools, its happening in public schools and it's happening everywhere. Half the school does it."
Yesterday, the bracelets hit the fan.
Sister Diane Androvich, the principal, called Megan and her mother in and said the girl would be allowed to take her final exams this year, but wouldn't be allowed back next year, the family said.
"They said I did an un-Christian thing," Michelle said. "They said if there was a problem, I should have reported it to them first. But I feel I was right to let other parents know what their children are doing."
School officials did not return calls for comment.
-- Andy Geller for The New York Post
EDIT: Thanks to a Blurty friend, I decided to check this out at Snopes.com, and it seems that the story may be too good to be true, at least with respect to what one wanted to read in it. See?
___ ___ ___
Yet it is not solely romantic yearnings and social awkwardness that give wings to such rumors — burgeoning sexual desire also plays its part. Boys caught up in the throes of hormonal tumult fervently pray for easy access to sex, so such a rumor falls upon their ears like rain on a parched field. Likewise, girls at that same stage are trying to come to terms with their impulses. One of the ways they do so is by abdicating responsibility for their urges to someone or something else, leaving them to preserve a particular view of themselves. The concept of being required to have sex would hold certain appeal because such obligation would take the decision out of their hands. The notion that a "sex coupon" could compel them to act out their desires gives them a way to vicariously explore lust while at the same time remaining a "good girl" in that there is no admission (internal or otherwise) of sexual hankerings.
The parents of thirty years ago were not going batty over "sex coupons" the way today's parents are over "sex bracelets" because they hadn't heard about them. Ignorance of their children's wacky belief cushioned them in a way that is no longer possible in our current media-saturated world. While it is true kids of the new millennium have a harder time holding on to their innocence, so too do their parents.
Since writing our original article, we've heard from hundreds of folks. The adults who've written almost always say their kids are never going to wear those bracelets again. On the other hand, almost without exception, the middle- and high-school kids from all across the US. express shock that the adults would think they were actually obeying this "code" and disappointment in their elders for failing to understand the bracelets are no more than a cool fashion accessory that has attracted a silly rumor. Yes, many kids had heard the rumor before the media threw it at them (and many hadn't), but even to those exposed to this snippet of lore in the wild (i.e., those that heard it from their friends as an item of schoolyard lore rather than gleaned it from the headlines of the day), this was nothing more than a giddy "everybody knows" fact, right up there with "Bubble Yum contains spider eggs."
-- Snopes Report
.
