Ask Armelda's Teen Advice for September 2002

Dear Armelda,

My best friend always tells me that she and her boyfriend never bother with condoms because they are completely monogamous and have been for four years. However, I went to a club last week and I saw her boyfriend there having sex with another girl in the VIP room. Should I tell my friend what I saw? Part of me thinks it's none of my business and I should stay out of it, while another part tells me that her health is at stake and as I friend I am obligated to tell her. I am absolutely one hundred percent positive it was her boyfriend I saw at the club that night, because the girl I saw him having sex with was me.

Lisa,
Elkhart, Indiana

Dear Lisa,

If you see your best friend's boyfriend messing around with some whore at a club, it is your duty to go to your friend and tell her what you saw, even if that whore was you. Be prepared for her to have hurt feelings at first, but eventually she will get over those feelings and she'll see that you had to tell her what you saw because your first responsibility is to protect her life, not to protect her dog of a boyfriend from getting caught. I have had unprotected sex with plenty of my friends' boyfriends, and I have always come clean with them afterwards because god only knows what I'm carrying.

Armelda

Almerda,

I am 13 years old from connecticut and i have a boyfriend i met on AOL who is 46. We haven't ever met each other in real life yet, but he wants me to fly to come see him in floreda soon. problem is, i don't have enough money to fly to see him, i don't know how to explain to my parents that i'll be gone for a week, and i'm 30 miles from the airport with nobody to give me a ride. Please help! I can't tell my parents about Dan because they wouldn't understand our love.

Paula

Dear Paula,

Something is fishy about this; I don't like it one bit. You're 13 and this man is 46 years old and he didn't offer to pay for your plane ticket to Florida? What does he expect you to do, sell lemonade for the money? If he can't cough up the dough to buy you a ticket to come see him, he's not worth it, honey, and you should drop the bum this second. If, however, he does buy you an e-ticket, the best way to get to an airport is Interstate hitchhiking. There are a lot of lonely truckers on I-95 at night who would love someone to talk to.

Armelda

Armelda

I need some advice. I'm a 17 year old guy from Storey City, Iowa, and I'm just about to begin my last year of high school. My parents have been pushing me toward electrical engineering after I graduate; they want me to go to a local tech school. But I think I might have what it takes to move to New York and become a dancer. The city has been calling my name since I was a little boy. Do you think I should follow my heart, or do what my parents want and stay in Iowa?

Dan Belmont

Dear Dan

Your story is as old as New York itself. I just want to tell you up front, New York is a cruel town. I had a friend in high school who moved to NYC after we graduated to become a dancer, and she ended up being a whore. I had another friend who moved to NYC to become a whore and ended up being a Broadway dancer. I can't tell you from your letter whether you have what it takes to make it as a dancer in the big city, but the alternative--whore--isn't that bad, either. The profession gets a bad rap from the Christians, but my friend who ended up being a whore now lives in a fancy penthouse with a 92-year-old husband who's about to kick it any minute and leave her everything, while the friend who became the Broadway dancer hit the cocaine pretty hard and was arrested on 34th street naked, savagely knifing a police horse and screaming about the apocalypse. She's in jail now.

You just never know in life.

Armelda

Please help me Armelda! My best friend her name is Teri is always covered in bruises. She tells everyone else that she fell down or walked into something, but she tells me the truth. Her dad beats her! And it's getting worse, Armelda. She's begged me not to tell anyone but I'm starting to think I have to. She says if I'm really her friend I'll stay out of it but I'm already in it. She had to go into the hospital and wear a cast for a rib that she broke "surfing". That's just stupid, we live in Colorado. Please help me Armelda I'm afraid one of these days he's going to kill her!!

Desperate,
Boulder, Colorado

That reminds me of a funny story. When I was about 16, I was working in a local fast food joint as a fry cook. I had just moved out of my parents house and was sleeping in a neighbor's basement behind their dryer, unbeknownst to them. I didn't have a lot of money, so back then when I saw a coin here or a dollar there, I would snatch it up as quickly as I could because every little bit helped. Anyway, it was after hours and I had just turned off the deep fryer. It was normal to see weird things at the bottom of the fry machine at the end of the day: rings, band-aids, syringes, my shroom bag, dancing trolls, what have you. I lost of a lot of stuff in there. But that particular day, I looked inside saw a shiny silver quarter sitting at the bottom of the machine underneath all the hot oil. I was like, "oooh, quarter!", and without thinking I stuck my hand right in the deep fryer and burned my hand and forearm so severely I had to be rushed to the urgent care center. I had my hand and arm bandaged up for four weeks. When the bandages finally came off and I was able to open my hand for the first time in a month, there, sitting right in my palm, was that shiny silver quarter. And a lot of dandruff.

I'm not sure what the point of that story was, but I hope you found it helpful.

Armelda

Dear Armelda,

My girlfriend is very sick right now. She has a high temperature and stomach pains and can barely stay conscious for more than a few minutes. Her parents won't take her to the hospital because they're Christian Scientists who don't believe in doctors or medical technology. She's getting worse every hour. I've told them they have to take her to the hospital like fifty times now and they keep saying that prayer is the best medicine. I think penecillan is a better medicine. What should I do?

Miller

Dear Miller,

Your girlfriend's parents don't believe in science, hence they don't realize that what they're actually caught up in is the process known as "natural selection", which is as old as life itself. Your girlfriend's parents are very, very stupid. Therefore, your girlfriend probably is too. People who are too stupid to seek medical attention for their dying children end up with dead children. Is this a bad thing? Not really. If your girlfriend were to survive long enough to breed, she would just spit out some more inordinately gullible children and fill their heads with Jesus this and God that, and at some point they would probably drive off a cliff or walk into a big fan, like stupid people do. It's inevitable. Stupid genes get weeded out of the gene pool eventually. It may be hard for you to come to terms with it now, but once you look at the big picture, you'll see that people who think prayer is a better vaccine against smallpox than a smallpox vaccine probably shouldn't pass their genes on to another generation anyway. There is something seriously wrong with that set.

Armelda

Dear Alameda,

I have been watching a lot of TV lately and I'm kind of upset by the commercial that talks about how if you buy drugs you're helping to blow up buildings, kill judges, murder families and bad stuff like that. At the end it says "Drug money supports terror. If you do drugs you might, too." That scares me. I do a lot of drugs but ever since September 11 last year I have been very against terrorism and blowing up buildings and stuff, and I am very angry at the Palestinians for doing it. Is what this commercial says true? When I buy weed from that 9th grader behind the bus garage or mail order acid from you, am I supporting terror?

Feliz

Dear Feliz,

I ate a really bad bag of mushrooms back in 2000 and I blacked out for almost two years, so I'm just now catching up on all the news. Here's my take on that ad: The Bush Administration is going out of its way to draw a link between the war on drugs (a long, costly failure) and the war on terror (soon to be a long, costly failure). When you buy weed from the kid behind the bus garage, he's probably spending that money on beer—cheap American beer—and cigarettes, and thus he is helping the American economy. When you mail order acid tabs from me, I use the money to buy blouses, household items and various inhalants, which is also good for the American economy. Drug money does not support terror; oil money supports terror. If your mom owns an SUV she's probably doing more to blow up buildings than you are if you smoked three truckloads of weed per day. Maybe you should kill your mom.

Wait, no, that's just the Lysol talking. You should love and respect your mother.

Armelda

Dear Amelia,

I recently started therapy and my psychologist has helped me recover a lot of repressed false memories of sexual abuse, satanic rituals, and even the murder of a little sister I never had. But how can I know for sure if my recovered false memories are true?

Seeking Answers,
Calimesa, CA

Seeking,

I underwent repressed false memory therapy a for about six months in 1998. I recovered lots of things that never happened, very similar to what happened to you. It's important to remember that this kind of therapy isn't about a strict interpretation of what actually "did happen" in "objective reality", but what could have possibly happened in alternative realities. An event that never occurred in objective reality may well have occurred in one of the many infinite quantum realities that make up the fabric of the universe, and therefore, you should be entitled to compensation for the abuses your alternate selves may have suffered. I got 2.5 million from my neighbor and his family thanks to this therapy, and they still send me a Christmas card every year, with more money, as required by the settlement. I never would have guessed before my therapy that they were sexually abusing me in alternate quantum realities; in objective reality they helped my parents pay for my schooling, and the dad even saved me from drowning when I was seven.

Armelda

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	./ask armelda/September 2002
	Armelda Simone is divisiontwo's in-house teen advice columnist. New advice is posted as it is received. Send your questions directly to Armelda at askarmelda@divisiontwo.com