Today is December 1st and it is World Aids Day.

AIDS

Yeah I grew up in the time that terrible thing reared its ugly head and made everyone afraid. AIDS was a death sentence when I was a teenager. There wasn't a chance of survival. It was just a wasting death.

1988 when I was in school there was still so much that wasn't known. People thought it could be passed by sharing needles, drinking cups, spit, and you name it. That made everyone suspect. Eventually it was known to be passed during sex, . I can remember going to a Health class where as you walked in you were handed two sheets of paper. One was folded up and the other was a large sheet where you were asked to go in and get five people to sign your sheet. In a class of 28 students two opened the folded paper to find a black dot. Each person they shook hands with was then infected. It was scary to see how easy it would be to pass that along. Because no one knew who was infected. It scared me and put me off sex for a long time.

Before I was 21, five friends had become part of the AIDS Quilt. People were dying, people were blaming, and people were hoping for a cure.

Twenty six years later there are drugs to help you survive. There still isn't a cure. The idea of being careful is again being forgotten. More frightening then ever are people who want the bug. Life is so precious and this dreadful killer still stalks so many world wide.

The only thing I can tell people is be careful. Remember those who came before you, learn from their mistakes. You don't need to repeat them to learn them. HIV and Aids are preventable, but they aren't curable. I'd prefer not to see another patch for the quilt ever made for someone I know.