I was born in October. As a matter of fact, my two elder sisters and I command the last three months of the year.

I always knew about Carnival. Our family trips to participate in Carnival celebrations on the streets of Marabella and San Fernando are among my earliest memories. That image of Carnival was fun, colourful, wanton and free.

At primary school, I learned about Carnival from a different perspective.

In my eleventh year, as a standard 5 pupil, I learned from some nurses who visited our school about the risks of wanton behaviour at Carnival time and the devastating consequences nine months later.

I was horrified. My birthday was in October. The nine-month gap was unmistakable. My friends were amused, but I did not think it was at all funny. My parents were not supposed to be sexual beings, my parents were just parents. They were not supposed to have a life beyond attending to my every need and besides, my mother was a very responsible woman. Even thinking that there was the possibility that I could have been a Carnival baby was just too much to bear. I had an exaggerated imagination and I would not venture to share how many trips my poor little mind took as I agonised over this thought, dreading Carnival and dreading my birthday — the two events that I loved most after Christmas each year. Thankfully, it turns out that the timing of our births was quite coincidental as our mother rarely participated in Carnival activities herself, my sisters and I share the same parents and, though my father is deceased, my mother would not dream of being any other being than my dear sweet parent to me. I have been relieved about my birthday ever since I learned this truth.

Last week, however, while browsing through a photo gallery posted online, featuring fetes for the 2012 season, I was reminded of that first formal Carnival lesson in school.

The photo gallery was certainly very entertaining. While some of the photographs were relatively sedate, some radiated pure fun and others captured hair-raising performances. In one picture, a woman who apparently could teach quite a few gymnastic classes, balanced on one leg, with the other perched on the shoulder of a friend who repeatedly smacked her in the rear. Now, having enjoyed more than a decade of unsupervised Carnival feting myself, I am hardly a prude, but I like to think that age has made me a pragmatist about a few things — and this is one. I have learned the hard way that there is life after Ash Wednesday and that wanton actions during the Carnival season can have lasting repercussions. This year, I had a good laugh about my past Carnival escapades with a group of friends as I cautioned them not to repeat some of my adventures no matter how alcohol-induced they might be. There are just some memories you may never be able to live down, and at Carnival time there are countless opportunities to create many of those.

I am also pressed to extend the same caution to revellers, moreso the young females planning to hit the streets this Carnival season. There is no disputing the fact that Carnival is an expression of freedom and beauty and colour for many of us. The reality however, for those who participate, is that this freedom to do almost anything we like, presses against all our normal constraints and can tempt an individual to release all inhibitions. I urge revellers to be mindful of the fact that during this celebration, there is a very thin and often blurred line between carefree expression and vulgarity, a line that I daresay we would not want to cross if we keep in mind the fact that there is life after the 48 hours of revelry.

There is another unfortunate reality. Some persons may choose to express themselves with an uninhibited and primal sexual abandon that can result in the unfortunate statistics that escalate in the nine months following Carnival Monday and Tuesday. There is also the ugly issue of rape and sexual assault, which rears its head over the Carnival weekend, and it is one that we must be mindful of when we are venturing out of our homes this season. The age-old advice to women at Carnival time to shun strangers, never accept drinks from strangers, always move with a group of friends and never sit alone in a car with only strange men is just as relevant today as it was decades ago.

Further, when it comes to consensual sexual behaviours, after years of gathering and collating data on the topic, there is no disputing the fact that in the months after Carnival there are higher records of sexually transmitted diseases, unanticipated pregnancies and unsafe abortions. Though there has been a proliferation of educational programmes urging caution and teaching safe sexual behaviours and practices during the Carnival season, these statistics continue to show a marked increase after Carnival every year. To those revellers who may be tempted to engage in irresponsible behaviour during the season, please remember that Carnival's freedom does not remove any of the dangers associated with unprotected sex.

This lesson must always be reinforced with our young children. Two Fridays ago, Express photographer Trevor Watson caught on camera the image of a young boy, still in uniform, standing poised, with his arms over the shoulder of a girl in uniform, hemming her in as he pressed his palms against the wall behind her back and leaned forward as if to whisper in her ear. The image presented by the teens screamed inappropriate. It is the typical image one might expect to appear on a cautionary flyer advocating safe sexual practices. Unfortunately, this was no staged picture, but a reality on Coffee Street in San Fernando two Friday ago. It is the image we have grown accustomed and desensitised to throughout the year, and one we sometimes avoid discussing if we encounter it in the height of the Carnival season when our main focus is to lift the image of our country in the eyes of our foreign guests. Turning a blind eye to situations like these will not make them go away. It is therefore important, as adults, that we sit with our teenagers and share with them as far as possible the information that can help them to make the right choice when faced with peer pressure, particularly during the season.

At Carnival time, walking the thin line between freedom and restraint might appear to be difficult, but it really comes down to our ability to exercise choice. We can choose to exercise freedom or to ignore our cultural heritage altogether or we can choose to find a balance in the middle. Whichever choice you make, just bear in mind that there is life after Carnival.