Sex and Love 100

Musings on the most basic life skill . . .

Sunday, December 18, 2011

How did you learn about sex? A 1960's Sex Education Lecture

     When I was about 11 years old, I rode my bike to my friend Linda Scalotta's house to play with our ‘Barbie dolls’.  She was a whole two years older.  She said to me,  “Come in my brother Nicky’s room and look what I found under his bed."  I knew my bother kept his GI Joe's there, then again, Nicky was 23 and my bother was 9.  She pulled a pile of magazines from under the bed and placed them on the chenille bedspread.  She opened one up.   I saw something so strange.  It was a grown man and he was wearing a mask on his private parts, it had a horrible long pink nose, and hair all around it!  To this day I can't get myself to look at those Marx brother phony noses that hood up to the eye glasses.  I was confused, actually I may have been in shock.
     Of course, Linda explained.  I was horrified and imagine my contorted face;  Linda began to tell me what I was really looking at.  "That’s not true," I yelled furiously yelled  "That’s not true." Now, I insisted.  " I have seen my bother every night in the tub and he doesn’t have one of those things!"
        She replied that “that’s what your parents do!”  I attacked her like a vicious dog.  “My parents don’t do anything like this,”  I screamed.  I remember peddling my bike furiously home, running in screaming to my mother, who then told me "it was all true."
      “Don’t you remember the book I gave you called The Gift of Life?"  She asked.  I searched my memory.  Cartoon pictures.  First page, a girl with hair under her arms, a boy shaving.  Page two; they meet.  By page five they were standing at the altar.  By page 6 they kissed at the altar.  Page seven; I recalled a magnifying, the kind you got in the science kit.  In the lens was a tadpole-like thing, it was being met by something else.  Oh yes, it was a seed.  Of course I knew it.  You grow hair under your arms and meet a boy who shaves.  You get married.  As you kiss him at the altar a tadpole swims out of his mouth and you swallow it.  It would look for the seed to eat. Hence, page nine told it all; she had a baby growing in her tummy and the baby came out.  I assumed of the belly button.  The book never said.  But I had caught enough tadpoles in the yard to know exactly where they came from.  I thought of all the neighborhood boys who had jars of swimming tadpoles on in the bedrooms.  It all made perfect sense to me.   Then it was all ruined.
     My mother continued with the rest of the story. I recall hearing only the words penis, erection and pain.  Her warning came in the form of a secret;  if you had sex a man's penis could get stuck in your vagina, just like what happened with the neighbors dogs.  My mind raced back to the event between FiFi and King; the Smith's poodle and the Herbacks German Shepard.  My mother told me they had to hose the animals down to pull them apart.
      She peered into my face, eyes bulging,  “Don’t ever do this until you are married  --no no matter what!”  The "what" part hissed out then snapped, so  I knew she was serious.  Of course I would never do this terrible thing.  I immediately knew my mother and I were on the same page.  If the hideousness of the act itself didn't repulse me, the consequences did.  My mind took me to the scene: First I conjured up the scene, yelling for help,  someone would have to pull the fire alarm on the corner.  I'd hear sirens, lots of them.  Just like when my mother caught the kitchen on fire making french fries, the entire fire department would come.  They had hoses.  If that didn't work, I  imagined myself on a stretcher,  some boy stuck inside me,  being taken to the hospital, and then being detached.  I had no problem making the promise. 
     “Never, never even when I am married, will I ever do this terrible thing!”   Then, she made me make a second promise; “whatever you do never tell anyone about this, because if their parents find out you will never be able to play with them again.”
     I violated promise number one 9 years later.  It took only 3 hours to tell my best friend Joyce the secret I had just learned about!

Have any funny tales?  Did you think you grew in a cabbage patch, the stork brought you, or were you bought at the Walmart?

No comments:

Post a Comment