The Fail Is Strong In This Child Who Blew Up A Used Condom Like A Balloon

Be warned. This is likely the nastiest thing you will see all week. Possibly, all month. I’m going to go out on a limb here and just say that every parent would call this story an absolute nightmare. An 8-year old Colorado boy found a used condom at his school’s playground and blew it up like a balloon. Are you barfing yet? If not, it’s cool. I’m barfing enough for all of the world.

You think of your kid’s school playground as a relatively safe place, right? They play there. With their little friends under the close supervision of their teachers. It should not be a place where used condoms show up, but at Bennett Elementary School, that is just what happened. Now, a young boy is being put through a battery of STD tests after being exposed to God knows what. From The Denver Channel:

“He’s at risk for HIV, Hepatitis C, Herpes, Gonorrhea, Chlamydia,” the boy’s mother, Alicia, said.

To protect her son’s identity, Alicia doesn’t want to show her face or share her last name. She said her son was at Bennett Elementary School when a teacher called and said that her son found what he thought was a balloon on the playground and tried to blow it up.

“When she took the ‘balloon’ out of his mouth, it was a used condom,” Alicia said.

Oh, God. Can you imagine getting that phone call from school? This poor family. Of course, some of these diseases might not show up for months, so it’s not like they can perform the tests and move on with life. This will haunt them for the next year, according to the article. Even worse, a staff member tossed the condom in the trash so that couldn’t be tested. It sounds like he may have been spared going through it himself had that not happened.

To top it all off, the school has already let the mother know that they won’t be claiming responsibility:

Alicia has a letter from the Colorado School Districts Self Insurance Pool, denying her claim. Calling the incident ”regrettable,” the letter concludes they are not liable for any damages.

“They will not pay for it because it’s taxpayers money and I feel like I’m a taxpayer. So, I mean, this is my son and they failed to protect him,” Alicia said.

This is tough. How can the school be expected to inspect every inch of the playground every day before the kids play on it? After hours, they can’t control who uses it either. I’m not sure they can be rightfully blamed but I do see where this mom is coming from. I would want heads to roll at the school if my kid sucked on a used condom during recess. Although by age eight, I’d like to think my kids wouldn’t do this, but you never know with kids.

Obviously, she can’t put the toothpaste back into the tube at this point — what’s done is done. But maybe this can motivate the rest of us to have the “don’t put random junk from the ground in your mouth” conversation with our kids a few extra times. I know my son picked up a frozen dog turd a few months ago thinking it was a pine cone, so they definitely need guidance in the trash vs. treasure decision-making process. I hope this kid comes out unscathed, though. What an awful ordeal for him and his family.

(Image: GettyImages)