fandomhigh | Sex Ed, Monday [3-2] Third Period

"Welcome back," Steve said. "I hope you all enjoyed your break, and that everyone is minus any new regrets and not too horribly sunburnt. Today I'd like to talk about peer pressure. Peer pressure is a terrible thing. You're sitting there, minding your own business, and then your so-called 'friends' tell you 'everyone else is doing it' or 'you'll be a loser if you don't,' and the next thing you know you're wearing a suit that cost more than should ever be spent on clothes and fighting a Nazi made out of bees in the middle of a Las Vegas casino. So it's bad, is what I'm saying. Don't do it. And when people try it on you, whether they're trying to get you to have sex or get a tattoo or buy stupidly expensive clothes or register with the government, tell them to get lost.

"Your assignment for today is to resist peer pressure. You can get into pairs or groups, whatever works well for you, and one of you will resist peer pressure applied by the others, who are trying to convince you to eat a bacon cookie. Have fun."

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"I m-might as well," she said, smiling slightly and taking one. "As then I can c-claim I've done the exercise."

She glanced down at it. "And failed." But, really, Hinata wasn't really of the opinion that it mattered over cookies.

"Fraid so." Priestly shrugged and swallowed. "But, hey, just a cookie, right? Not like they're addictive."

"Or dangerous," she agreed, nibbling on hers and finding it, well, a bit weird but edible. "And a c-cookie is fairly easy to say yes or no to."

"Exactly. And peer pressure never works like they say it does, all 'everyone's dooooing it'. They make us sound like evil douche bags."

Hinata didn't know what a douche bag was, but the sentiment was clear enough.

She shook her head. "I don't have m-much experience with peer pressure," Hinata admitted. "But I would t-think that, going from what I know of other kinds of pressure, that it's more a c-combination of a great deal of people carrying the expectation that everyone is d-doing it, and the person themselve winding them up to a point where they feel that everyone else is making them do it."

"Yeah. It's not like if you say no the person's gonna, like, whine at you about it. You might get asked why not once, but that's it. But that makes a lot of people uncomfortable, so they go along with whatever it is, just to not get asked that."

She looked a bit rueful at that.

"It'd be nice," Hinata said mildly. "If n-not doing something was always that easy. Peer pressure doesn't sound so bad from that perspective."

"That's all it is, in my experience. But, see, people, especially teenagers, they like to think they're all different, but they actually just wanna be accepted and all like everyone else. And most of 'em think they gotta act alike to get accepted, and so they just do what they see other people doing, even when they know it sucks."

"When you throw consequences i-into the equation, though," she said, fingering the cookie. "Things get m-messier."

"A bit, yeah. That's the other reason why this exercise is so flawed."

"Exactly, so people c-can say no without any fear of being in trouble--it makes t-taking a stand easier."

"Know what makes it even easier? Finding friends who won't ask you to take a stand in the first place."

Priestly was speaking from experience on that one.

That got a bit of a smile.

"That's true as well," she said. "Though harder, at times, than it s-sounds."

"True. But, hey, it's usually worth trying."

"Most of anything is u-usually worth trying," she noted. "It merely d-depends on the cost at the end to see if it is s-still worth it."

Sex Ed, Monday [3-2] Third Period

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