I don’t think there is or has ever been a teenage boy who, after hearing the vague “physical probs/problems” would feel the slightest inclination to ask follow-up questions.
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Comics I Don't Understand 
That’s exactly what I thought. If Dionne (a female friend) were asking the questions, it would be more believable.
This kid is clueless. And/or either they don’t have “female problems” in comicland, or else we are supposed to think she is not in school because of “female problems” and then, ha ha, it’s a bad hair day.
When I was going through meno, I had to ask my profs if I could take the finals at a different time. All I had to do way say ‘medical problem’ and to a man (and they were all men) they just quickly asked, “Okay, when do you want to take it?” Details not required. Or desired. Heh.
Chak: When I was a professor, I wouldn’t have asked any students, male or female, to clarify what their “medical problem” was. If a student gave such a vague description, I would have thought they wanted to keep the specifics private, and I wouldn’t think it was my business to ask about details. Regardless of whether they said [unmentionable lady issues] or “brain surgery,” it’s not like I was going to ask for a doctor’s note.
“When I was a professor, I wouldn’t have asked any students, male or female, to clarify what their “medical problem” was.”
When I was, we did. ADA was new and we had to make reasonable accommodations for some conditions, while the school had strict rules about everything else.
“I don’t think there is or has ever been a teenage boy who, after hearing the vague ‘physical probs/problems’ would feel the slightest inclination to ask follow-up questions.”
But then again, there has to be a learning experience, in which teenage boys learn that there are questions they don’t want the answers to. For a fictional example, there’s a scene in Community wherein Abed, who’s been tracking (and predicting) the moods of the female members of the group, learns what exactly he’s been tracking.
I’m pretty sure that by age 16, Jeremy has learned this.
Especially since he’s been dating Sara for about 20 years.
My 9th grade math teacher was infamous for mocking girl who had to attend to these “probs.”
I almost wish he could come back to life just long enough to have to teach under 2018 standards.
WW – I didn’t expect them to ask, it was the rapidity with which they cut off any further information that I found amusing.
Totally not believable to me. He wouldn’t ask, and she would be at school, because what kind of parent lets their kid stay home because of a bad hair day?
Chak: Fair enough. :)
Wendy, maybe she got to stay home because she asked her father rather than her mother, and she told her father she was having “body probs” and he didn’t question her further.
“what kind of parent lets their kid stay home because of a bad hair day?”
The kind who have to leave for work before the kid leaves for school. And me. By the time my precious little treasure was old enough for high school, she was old enough to be in charge of getting herself there. One of the ways you get self-sufficient young adults is to give them meaningful autonomy.
James Pollock, fair enough, but wouldn’t the kid then be in trouble when you got home and discovered that she had stayed home for such an unimportant reason?
We do allow our (middle school) teen to tell us if she’s not feeling well enough to go to school, but I’d never let her stay for this reason, and she’d be in serious trouble if she did. (This policy is contrary to how I was raised, which was if there was no fever or throwing up, you were going to school!)
I don’t know. The thing about giving your kid autonomy is that you don’t give it to them unless they can use it. The problems created by skipping school for a dumb reason won’t fall on me, and if there are none, then she was right that she could take the day off.
By the time the kid’s that old, the parent shouldn’t be making many of the decisions. They should be available for consultation, and for crisis intervention, but the day-to-day management should be minimal. That’s the approach I used for the one kid I tried it on, and it worked for that one. YMMV.
Old magazine cartoon: Middle-aged man on a sofa next to a werewolf in a dress. He addresses their hosts:
“We’d better run along. It’s Mabel’s time of the month.”
Oddly enough, I was a naive enough teenage boy to ask follow-up questions. If I had a girlfriend, that is. I was too shy to try to get one. And this is in spite of having 4 sisters!
Happened to me one day when my first baby sister was old enough not to come to the swimming pool with the rest of the family. I was 14. Never happened again (3 baby sisters). My mother had answered: “She has essentially feminine problems”.