This story was broadcast on NPR's All Things Considered on 6/3/2011, and was originally published on Turnstyle News..

A lot has changed since the 80’s. Or so I’m told. I wasn’t born until 1991 – the same year Magic Johnson announced that he had HIV. I’m 19 now, and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard people joke that Magic Johnson discovered the cure to AIDS…money.

Katherine Hood knows the same joke. She’s a senior at UC Berkeley and has grown up knowing about the disease her whole life. Regardless of the jokes, we both know HIV is still deadly serious. “I think it’s interesting because while I don’t think it’s the same sort of death sentence mentality,” says Hood, “To me if I actually stop and think about it, it still seems like a horrifying thought.”

Hood and lots of kids we talked to say their school Sex Ed classes were pretty good. Thanks to my school’s health classes, I had seen a condom by the 7th grade and knew what it was for. My mom even bought me a book called Deal With It. I remember my friends coming over after school to giggle about stick figure illustrations of sexual positions.

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It was warm today in Brooklyn – a balmy 62 degrees that peeled the winter coats off bewildered pedestrians, exposed sidewalks that have for months been covered by dirty mounds of ice, and emptied scores of shrieking children onto the cement playgrounds and grassy courtyards that surround the public housing buildings in my neighborhood. After the snowiest January since New York City started keeping records, it was as if these kids had woken from a long dream and jumped directly into a game of tag.

In 2008, Viacom launched a show on MTV called “16 and Pregnant” which was followed by “Teen Mom”. These shows were produced to show audiences around the world what it would be like for a teenager in high school to accidentally become pregnant and have to take care of a second, delicate life while attempting to balance their own. However, this show failed to share the truth of most unplanned pregnancies.

On an early Sunday morning, my dad announced to the family that he would be getting the H1N1 vaccine and that my mother would be taking my brother and me to get it done as well.

Immediately, my brother and I refused. We both had reservations about the vaccine.

We decided to have a family meeting--not heated, but civil.

My dad asked us why we were against it.

We said that even though we might run the risk of getting the swine flu, we couldn’t predict the possible side effects of the vaccine.

My dad didn't say much after that.

The following is a transcript of a story first broadcast on NPR's Morning Edition.
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