Story Archive

Tomorrow’s Vocabulary Test

“I thought, ‘Wait, what’s this word?’ I never heard [of it]. Is it something I shouldn’t know?” wondered Frances Habeck, 12, a sixth-grader at Trinity Lutheran School in Racine, Wisc. The word: “dildo” — and Principal Pamela Amling of the church-run school accused her, in front of classmates, of selling them to other students, and suspended her. What she actually sold is toy “Water Snake Wigglies” — and the girl had permission from a teacher to sell them for a church fundraiser. Her father, Milt Habeck, is demanding the school apologize for “the public shaming of my daughter,” and their accusation “that she was selling sex toys.” The school did back-pedal, saying media accounts are “inaccurate” as to what happened. “We have never asserted that a ‘water snake’ toy is a sex toy,” said the school’s pastor, Rev. David Gehne. “That’s an incredible lie,” retorts the girl’s father. And where did Frances discover the toy, innocent or not? At the church’s Sunday School: someone gave one to an autistic boy to calm him. (RC/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, WISN Milwaukee, WTMJ Milwaukee) ...Anything can be a sex toy if you’re brave enough.