| My first introduction to AIDS came through the news | | | | What was wrong with everybody, I wondered? At |
| reports of a boy named Ryan White who had | | | | that time, AIDS was such a new disease and few |
| contracted the disease through a blood treatment | | | | people knew much about how it was spread from |
| for his hemophilia. I was only 10 or 11 at the time this | | | | person to person. Fear of this new unknown disease |
| story was making headlines, but I distinctly remember | | | | caused the masses to panic. What many people do |
| wondering why so many people were scared of him | | | | not know is that in the early 1980s, which many |
| and why they didn?t want to allow him back to | | | | attribute to be the start of AIDS, this epidemic had |
| school. His mom ate, played and lived with him every | | | | already been around for forty years in other parts of |
| day and she wasn?t scared of being close to him. | | | | the world where it originally began. |