The Rise and Fail of the Purity Police

Tenerife has a highly sexualized society. I don’t know if it’s because it’s a vacation destination or what. Whatever the reason, it’s difficult to travel very far here without seeing some sort of sexual reference, be it statues of banana people in provocative poses or flat out porn. A majority of the time I try to ignore it, but a few days ago, I decided to take action.

The whole family was out at a restaurant to celebrate my birthday. The place was (I thought) a family-friendly establishment and there were lots of other people with their children. Things were going just fine. We were all eating ice cream, which for some reason always comes with cocktail umbrellas and other gewgaws stuck in it, and enjoying the time.

The problem arose when it was time to pay. Ruyman and I drifted over to the cash register and while he examined the bill, I looked at the stacks of cards prominently displayed on the counter. It took me a second to realize what I was looking at. One of the stacks of cards had kittens playing on it and a calendar on the back. The other two piles featured a very different breed of pussy. 

I was more than normally outraged. Here in plain view of kids was some pretty hard core porn! I covered the offending images with the pictures of the cats. Just as I did so, Carmen and Noelia walked up. Carmen noticed the kittens and said, “Oh, I want one of these!” Instead of picking up just one from the kitten pile, she grabbed a fistful from one of the porno piles and looked at them. “Coño!” she exclaimed, which was a very apt description of the image. She hastily put them back on the counter, but as she did so, Ashley bounded up. 

“What are those?” Ruyman’s little sister asked. “Can I see? Let me see!” she tried to grab a card from the counter. “No!” we all shouted. “Don’t touch those!” It took a lot of body blocking, but together we helped Ashley keep her innocence.

So what’s the moral of the story? Sometimes it’s better to do nothing than to do something and draw more attention to the problem.