Too Much and Not Enough

My students are writing argumentative research papers on a topic of their choosing. ONe of my particularly comical chaps--C.H.--decided to write about teen pregnancy. Rumor has it that this kid is sexually active, but I just close my eyes and cross my fingers that my lil thirteen-year-old surfer kid isn't doing the nasty. Anyway, yesterday we're talking because heing trying to develop his thesis. He's using me as sounding board, but is getting kind of frustrated because he just can't get his words out right. His first thesis is "Teen pregnancy is bad and should be made illegal," to which I respond: "So all teenagers who get pregnant should be forced to have an abortion?"--he definitely wasn' t implying that; he goes through a few more ideas when finally we get to the deeper issues he wants to talk about, but not necessarily articulate. Apparently, he felt a little skittish about saying the word "sex" (good enough reason not to be doing it if you ask me), so instead of saying it, he proceeded to put both of his hands behind his head and flap his elbows. My PPT Mrs. Garza and I bust into peals of laughter--my first thought (and almost the first thing outta my mouth) was "What kind of sex are you having?" But OF COURSE you can't have that sort of conversation with a seventh-grader, so we just giggled at his obvious naivete. HIGH-larious. Gotta love these kids...