Doctors are warning parents to ensure that their children know the dangers of sharing needles. “We have seen a sharp rise in the spread of HIV among teenagers from the West Island,” says Dr. Lawrence Real of the Beaconsfield General Hospital, “and it’s all thanks to a bizarre new game that’s weeping playgrounds and school. It’s called Spin the Needle, and it’s every bit as dangerous as it sounds."

Late last year, principles as St-Lomas High School caught several teenagers in their school spinning a needle around. The students admitted under question to sharing the needle among each other. “They don’t put any drugs in the needle,” says Principle Maria Couteau, “they just put their blood in it, and then they spin it, and whoever the needle points to has to inject the blood that was in it."

Teenagers, for their part, claim that spinning the needle is the newest way of establishing intimacy among teenagers. “In the 1960s, holding hands was a big deal, in the 1970s, it was kissing, in the 1980s, it was giving blow jobs, in the 1990s, it was having sex, in 2000s, it was having group sex,” says Stacy McQueen, an 18 year old student who recently graduated from High School. “Today, teenagers are taking it one step further. We’re skipping sex and jumping right to sharing each other’s diseases. We want to out-risk everyone else."

Leonora Bedwig, a teenageologist who works for McGonnicle University’s Child Education Centre, says that the invention of spin the needle doesn’t surprise her in the least. “For the last hundred years, each generation has striven to break more taboos than the last,” says Leonora. "We’re fast approaching a kind of event horizon where there will be no more taboos to break. Spin the needle comes close to that horizon, but the envelope can be pushed even further. I predict that in the next ten years, teenagers will have invented something that makes spin the needle seem quaint and harmless.”

Dr. Lawrence Real isn’t so sure. “I fear for a future where sharing needles with people is considered safe compared to other teenage activities” says Dr. Real. “I think we, as a society, are failing our kids. The fact that they think sharing needles is a fun way to spend an after noon says something deeply disturbing about the culture we live in."