Red

For community health clinical as a nursing student, my section set up camp outside of the school's cafeteria taking blood pressures, giving out free condoms and lube, and handing out literature to fellow college students much like the Jesus people handing out their tracts to heathens. We warned about having too much fun in college: drinking, having sex. Or about not having fun at all: depression.

During one of those weeks, I created an educational poster to highlight HIV/AIDS. I thought it would be cool to hand out red ribbons to raise awareness. I found myself explaining what the ribbon is for more than what HIV/AIDS was about to the "younger" generation. That gap, of seven or eight years between me and "them," felt wide. To them, "Rent" is a period piece, as old as "La Boheme." Not even a whiff of the menace the disease once felt like, the anger of those early times only a cooling ember.

This one young woman asked me, "Wearing the ribbon means you have AIDS?"
If not for the fact that I was being graded, I would've laughed at her stupidity.
I hope she's learning some other things in school.