Preface To Rubber: My Early Experience With That Word

Rubber is this word that somehow walked the line between clean & dirty, which made it frequently funny, when I was a kid.  I have a memory of not knowing if I should say it out loud unless it was as an adjective, i.e. rubber eraser, rubber ball.

"Rubbers" is of course what people have called condoms since - when?  The Online Etymology Dictionary says it dates from the 1930s, but the Wikipedia entry on condoms disagrees, saying:

The rubber vulcanization process was invented by Charles Goodyear in 1839, & patented in 1844. The first rubber condom was produced in 1855, & by the late 1850s several major rubber companies were mass-producing, among other items, rubber condoms. A main advantage of rubber condoms was their reusability*, making them a more economical choice in the long term. Compared to the 19th century rubber condoms, however, skin condoms were initially cheaper & offered better sensitivity. For these reasons, skin condoms remained more popular than the rubber variety. However, by the end of the 19th century, "rubber" had become a euphemism for condoms in countries around the world.

Whom should I believe?

Of course, my classmates didn't really talk about condoms until the pubescent shit storm that is middle school, & all I knew is that there was something called rubbers & it had to do with sex.  So one time in seventh grade, when a female classmate came in late to first period because it was raining, & she came in in rain gear, & the teacher said, "Honey, go ahead & take off your rubbers," referring to her galoshes, the guys in the class lost it.

"Honestly," the teacher said, "you boys should grow up."

At this point I should mention that the only sex education available to students of the Garland Independent School District was a filmstrip produced some time in the early 1960s shown in fifth grade.  No follow ups, nothing.

Not that we wouldn't have laughed anyway.

* Their reusability?!?