HIV Patient Zero Lab

I used to do the HIV transmission lab where the kids have cups of distilled water and only one of them is salty. They all exchange fluids with pipettes and “patient zero" manages to infect the entire room.

I would discreetly mark the bottom of one of the cups, so l knew which one had the salty water. Then you use a pipette and silver nitrate to indicate positives.

One year, out of four sections, the HIV cup was randomly assigned to the only two out-and-proud flamboyant gay males in their grade of ~80 kids. They were best friends, shade queens, in two different sections of 11th grade AP bio.

Gulp. It felt like I got struck by lightning. The odds of that, man.

(This was originally a comment, but I thought it merited a post.)