Maybe I’m too old to appreciate this.  

I was at a comedy club the other night and two or three waiters (I’m not being politically correct because I can’t decide to use wait people or wait persons, and they both sound awful) would stand together and periodically scream out, “Guess what?”  And the audience obediently screamed back the expected response, “What?”  (Guess they had been there before and learned the routine.)

Then the waiters, pointing to a table, would scream back, “We’ve got 2 (or 3 or 5) virgins over here.

Tasteless.  At least, I thought so.  Everyone else was howling. 

I’ve had problems with the casual use of the word – a Virgin Mary or Virgin Margarita drink; or someone’s virgin trip to a store or a scuba dive.  Even, Virgin Airlines.  This has bothered me for years, but at the comedy club, I was really offended.

In trying to figure out why, I flashed back to a client I had seen many years ago.  She was 42 years old and had never been married.  She was ashamed that, at her age, she had never had sex.     

“When I was in my teens and 20’s,” she confessed, “I wanted to ‘save’ myself for my husband.  Then I was willing to change my standards, saving myself for a man I loved.”

But, she never met that man and the years went by.  She dated lots back then, less in her 30s.  Then, it became more embarrassing to have sex with someone just to have it – and, she added, “It would be really embarrassing to let just any man know he was my first.”  

The pain she felt was excruciating.  She helped me understand what many other women might feel but feel too bad about themselves to share.  What started out as a good value became a stain on her self-esteem.

We toss around the word, “virgin” – for what purpose?  What are we trying to communicate?  Is calling someone a virgin suppose to be humorous, a put down, condescending?

OK, maybe I am too old.