MyPheme – Tell It Like It Is

Learning about sex, one B at a time.

I can remember, in almost pretty vivid detail, the day I learned about the birds and the bees. It was a muggy; overcast, hot, Pittsburgh summer day. The kind that made you want to run through everyone’s garden sprinkler. I was nine and sitting on the front stoop of my house with my 10 year old sister, Debbie. I remember clutching her arm as our 13 year old neighbor, Rusty, told us everything he knew about private body parts, reproduction and all the slang definitions for such. My sister and I sat jaw dropped for two hours while Rusty gave us the precise details. We were allowed to ask questions, and Rusty patiently answered every one. It was very informative to say the least. Looking back, sex according to Rusty was amazingly accurate.

How did he get all of that information? That was the one question I forgot to ask. I doubt that it was his parents because our parents never told us anything. We wouldn’t even think to ask. The only parental involvement that I do remember was my mother giving my sister and me a menstrual kit by Kimberly Clark when we were 11, but she never offered any personal advice and just told us to read through it. Thank God my sister was an expert reader, because I couldn’t make sense of any of it. I remember taking some of the sanitary pads and tampax to summer camp, where my entire bunk communally learned how to have a period.

Three years after Rusty’s seminar, my sister and I took it upon ourselves to have a talk with our then 10 year old brother, Harvey.  He too sat on the front stoop with his jaw dropped. Harvey never asked any questions. He just smiled at the end and said, “Is that it?” He must have filed that somewhere in the back of his brain but my sister and I like to take credit for his gentle nature and rumored winning ways with women that has followed him for some 30 years. You know the line, “You heard it here first?” With that in mind, I vowed as a grownup and a parent to have an open dialogue with my children regarding this subject. When they asked, I would tell.

It started when my daughter went off to kindergarten. One day, she flew off the bus, very concerned and said, “Mommy, Mollie said that you have to touch a man’s penis when you get married. Is that true?” There went my thought of a gentle introduction to the subject; but when opportunity strikes, you need to take advantage. I brought her inside, and proceeded to tell her how babies were born. I remember using a lot of simple biological details which made it sound a little medical, but my daughter took it all in. When I was finished she asked, “How does a baby come out of hole that size?”  Now that’s a brain that works, I thought. For a brief second, I considered writing a how-to-talk-to-your-kids book about sex, but deep down inside, I wondered how much she really understood. She never brought up our talk again until a couple of years later.

While driving to her ballet class, my daughter, who has always been a great thinker, popped another whopper question out of nowhere. “So, Mom, what does it feel like when Daddy sticks his penis in your vagina?” It’s amazing that I could keep the car on the road. My fear that our sex talk was going to come back to haunt me started to ring true. How can you possibly answer that question? I stammered a bit and blurted out, “That’s such a grownup feeling that would be really hard to explain but I promise, when you are older, I will tell you all about it.” “Okay, Mom”, she answered and that was it. End of dilemma. I knew that if I could stall her until her teenage years she would NEVER ask me that question again. When I reminded her of the story several years later, she ran out of the room holding her ears screaming, “Too much information”.

My middle child popped his question at the age of seven when we were watching the Disney Channel, of all things, on my bed. Some innocuous program had prompted the question, “Where do babies come from?” We had a nice relaxing chat about reproduction and the like and afterward I asked him if he had any questions. “Nope, I’m good.”, he said. I really felt like I was starting to master this whole sexual education process but then I noticed that he was squeezing his penis.

“Is your penis all right?” I asked. “Oh yea mommy, I’m just squeezing it because I don’t want it to accidentally go into your vagina.” May Day. I guess I wasn’t such a great sex educator after all.  Needless to say, I spent the next hour going over every detail with him until I was sure he understood the process.

My youngest child never seemed interested in learning about the birds and the bees. I don’t ever remember him asking. He did present one opportunity several years ago when he exercised a rule I put in place that allowed my kids to freely say “bad words” or “potty words” exclusively in the bathroom. I was trying to take some of the steam out of the weight we put on bad language. I figured that if I let my kids say them in a safe enclosed space, then they wouldn’t seem so important. So one day, my youngest son, at the age of five, came in from playing with a bunch of neighborhood kids and urgently ordered me to go to the bathroom so he could tell me the newest potty word he learned moments ago. I dutifully followed him in, whereby he gave me my first clue. “It starts with a B,” he stated proudly. “Bitch” I thought to myself…it could have been worse. He pulled me down to his level and whispered in my ear, “BAGINA”. It took all I had not to laugh out loud. “Oh, you mean vagina,” I said, and I seized the opportunity to explain as much as I could. Did it sink in, I thought to myself? I distinctly remember him trying to run out to join his friends again mid lecture. Where in his brain he stored my condensed version, I’ll never know. I suspect that somewhere along the line, he too had a Rusty friend, who told it like it is because he never asked me anything more about sex, reproduction or the like until our family vacation, nine years later, when we were all jammed in a mini van driving to St, Augustine Florida for some historical sightseeing.

My husband was driving, I was riding shotgun and my three teenagers were hunkered down in the back seats.  My daughter was busy BBMing her friends about next years campus housing issues, my middle son was engrossed in a Marvel Zombie comic and my youngest was doing what he always does, impersonations, specifically Borat, as he made side commentaries about the passing scenery. Then, breaking the peaceful interior of the picture perfect mini van atmosphere was my youngest son’s amazing question to his older brother.

“Hey, how many random boners do you think that you get in a day?”

Two seconds of silence while the question registered.

“Oh my God, that’s disgusting!” yelled my daughter.

“Oh, shut up and play with your blackberry,” offered my youngest son and then he went right back to it. “So, how many”?

My other son looked up from his book and grinned. “Five or six” he said proudly.

My daughter could barely breathe. “Mom, Dad, do you think you could be normal parents here? Tell them to shut up!” she exclaimed.

“Relax,” said my youngest, “its open dialogue.”

 My daughter was repulsed. “I go to college and this whole family goes to shit”, she added.

 “Potty word,” declared my other son.

This all happened so fast that it took me a few seconds to get my bearings. “Honey, did it ever occur to you that your sister might not want to hear about your random boners?” I offered. “Thank you,” she said emphatically. My son was on a roll and begged to ask one more question. My daughter gave me the big “ Oh-God-No-Mom” cry. I agreed that he could ask one more question and then we would have to change the subject. Even before he asked it, I felt like a game show contestant.

“You know, guys feel sensations in their penis’s. Do girls feel anything in their vagina's? I mean, can you feel the essence of your vagina?” My son asked.

My husband burst into hysterical laughter,  and the entire car convulsively broke up.

“Don’t answer him Mom!” my daughter pleaded.

Okay, so I wanted to say, “you mean my Bagina?” because I felt like my sex talk had made a full circle and what goes around, comes around.  I remembered that I made a promise and I felt the need to follow through. Consistency is important, right?

“Girls do feel the essence of their vagina, only it’s on the inside.” I said.

The answer seemed to work and the conversation shifted to lunch.  Back in the car, after we ate, my daughter said that she was going to think twice about coming home from college again, for which we all collectively burst into a raucous laughter. The funny thing about the sex talk is that we all realized it united us in hilarity and after all these years, it still made us feel incredibly connected and real. Honesty works in weird ways. As for my book about Sex Talks for Kids, I guess I’ll just leave that to the scholarly experts.