This Story Is True, Names Withheld To Protect The Innocent

I am one of those girls that got knocked up in high school. We lived in a small community, my father was the high school principal and my mother taught piano. Everyone knew who I was. Everyone knew who knocked me up. I had two choices. I could leave town and go live with an uncle and aunt to have the baby, or face my town.

The father, who had to remain unacknowledged because of the age difference, told me to face them, head on. Don't cower to them, carry you pregnant belly to class. It just might remind them of where they came from. I had to, it really was the only choice.

My father, the principle, had to find a way to convince the Board of Education that there were not prohibitions about being pregnant in class. Not for teachers, not for staff, not for students. Pregnancy was a matter of fact. life happens. And it might just keep other girls from uncrossing their legs.

In the meantime, while this fight was going, I was married secretly. Once married they couldn't throw the book at him, which was the mood of the High and Mighty and Ladies at the Church. Find him, tar and feather him, ride him out of town on a rail. The purity of the town was at stake. No one ever did ask at what age they lost their virginities, and had any of them, by chance not gone on a trip and came home relieved of their mistake? Were they all pure when they walked down the isle. What about Rob the Impaler who is said to have popped more cherries than any other high school senior?

I was the only girl with a pregnant belly at school. For someone my size a big pregnant belly sticks out. I walked, or waddled, my way between class, comforted in that I was married, although not discussed. The birth of my child came right on time, like a clock, now they could count back to the day and time of his conception. Just where was I exactly nine months before? Oh! so that's when it happened. Now who is the father? It has to be on the birth certificate and that's a public record. Except that my father managed to keep it hidden for a while.

When I walked, on stage to get my diploma, I was the only mother walking that day. Maybe just maybe there were a couple of fathers walking that day, but of course no one knows for sure, now do they? Boys you know get around, maybe on the other side of town.

Once graduated and at home with my baby the news got out, without a reporter. Mary Sue is married to who? You're kidding, she is married to him? Damn, who would have guessed he got in her pants. Damn, excuse the expression, wasn't that statutory? You heard they were already married? No way, she didn't elope, did she? An now she is at church with her baby and that man, who could be her father, or older brother or something. A man like that with a child bride. Showing off that he took advantage of her. Shame.

But she is married in the eyes of the Lord, and the law. So we welcome them in our church.