You've come a long way, baby?

I heard the Charlie Daniels Band's "Devil Went Down to Georgia" yesterday for the first time in a while and I remembered the impression the song made on me when it first came out in 1979. I was eight and it was a huge hit on the radio except that in that version Johnny tells the devil, "I done told you once, you son of a gun, I'm the best there's ever been." I remember all the talk on the schoolyard about how somebody's brother's got the album and on the album version he calls the devil "a son of a..." (voice drops to a solemn whisper) "...bitch."

How times have changed.

I was at my school's annual theater cabaret-style revue, "All About Your Mother," a week ago and was really impressed. It's an all-student production. They put up the website, sell the tickets, set up, break down, write the skits and musical numbers, perform, sell concessions, etc., etc., etc. It was a real blast, and the only way to really tell it was an all-teenager production was that every once in a while at a moment of major dramatic conflict in a skit, Barry White's "Let's Get It On" would come on the speakers and everyone would forget the skit and start making out.

I also think I was the only person over 18 there who got why the band called themselves "The MILF hunters" in the program.

They had some musical and dance numbers as well, including a really impressive breakdancing demonstration by a student who would have gotten top billing in "Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo" if he had been born when it came out.

There was one number, though, where five girls were dancing provocatively in short shorts and hoodies to the Ying Yang Twins' "Wait (The Whisper Song)." The beat was really catchy but the lyric (note my use of the singular) was "Hey, bitch, wait till you see my dick / I'm gonna beat that pussy up." Over and over and over while these seventeen-year-olds waved their rears at us and spanked themselves.

That REALLY bothered me a lot. I tell myself that my students, if they really like someone, might hold hands and eat milk and cookies together in the park, but as a retired teenager, I'm afraid I know better. Denial: not just a river in Egypt.

Sex is a part of growing up, I know, but it shouldn't be predatory and ugly. Watching those girls dance to those words really chilled me. I actually cringed and had to look away.

Sometimes -- like when I get the "MILF hunters" reference -- I feel like the young and hip teacher I imagine myself to be. Sometimes -- "bitch, wait till you see my dick..." -- I feel a hundred and thirty years old.