Sex Education

In 5th grade, a mysterious blue (or was it pink?) paper was discreetly passed out to the girls but you cannot keep a secret like that from the boys. We found out what the papers said in short order. But we didn't know what they meant. Something about a "maturation" program. What's this about, we asked. The teacher explained that the girls would be attending a special lecture. Why not us? As best as she possibly could break it to us, the teacher explained that girls mature physically earlier than boys. Todd protested, "GIRLS AREN'T MATURE!!!" Todd was one of the "secondary" big guy on campus guys. Secondary, meaning that he wasn't quite as perfect and suave as Bill and his ilk. But he was confident, athletic, good-looking and everything - just a little rough around the edges - not a pro cool like Bill. He was buddies with Lloyd. Not relevant.

I remember how strange this new development felt. Maturation. Hmm. We went outside and commiserated. I hung with Blaine. Blaine was not big or musclular. Not a big guy on campus. More or less like me but not as quiet. Anyway, it turns out that he was an excellent wrestler and we used to wrestle. Funny how I wrestled an awful lot with all my friends since as early as I can remember and yet I never had an inkling to think I may actually be a wrestler until I was in high school. Funny. 'Course, I didn't know there was such a thing as wrestling as a sport until then. Anyway -

We went outside and tried to come to grips with Maturation and the fact that the girls had it and we didn't. We found a way out: The girls were "nasty." They were going to a "nasty" lecture and as a reward, they were going to be served refreshments. For being nasty. Huh. Blaine said, mocking, "I'm going to (here he said something I cannot repeat), and they're going to give me 30 hotcakes!" It felt very strange.

The next year, we got our lecture. Bill's dad came and sat with him, which was an option, but most of our dads could not get off work. I don't think mothers were invited. Mothers all came last year with the girls. I think. I was glad my dad wasn't there. Bill's dad was all brimming with poise and confidence and friendliness, and Bill seemed to take it well, but I'll bet he had just as soon not had him there. Or maybe I'm wrong, since nothing there was Bill couldn't handle. Anyway, a doctor came and drew some intimate pictures with chalk and gave a lecture and told us it was normal and okay to masturbate and we left without saying or asking anything. Bill's dad just smiled. No one ventured to protest the viewpoint given on masturbation. But I assume Bill heard about it. But I never did.

So it was a little strange but not a big deal, and we did not get any cake or fancy favors.

Now that I've had time to think about it, I do seem to remember that the girls got a pink paper and we got blue.

Blaine said he had followed one of the girls home after their lecture and she had picked up a rock and was weight lifting with it as she walked. We wondered what all kind of stuff they had been told. I still wonder.

I had asked my Dad about the Birds and the Bees I had heard so much about, a year or two earlier. We rarely ate in the dining room, but for some reason I was alone with my parents at dinner - in the dining room - when I was 9 or 10. I said (in all light nonchalantness and sarcasm), "Dad, so tell me about the birds and the bees!" I had not the slightest concept that it had a remote thing to do with physiology.

Dad swallowed his heart back down his throat and proceeded to tell me point blank and business-like, all the necessary details about the wonderful baby invitation process in marriage.

I have never been so blindsided. I asked frantically, "Are you sure there isn't any other way?" They said there wasn't, and when the time came, I probably wouldn't mind so much and not to worry. I went out and sat in the dark night on the front steps. Just weeks before, I had straightened my friend Kevin out on the subject of reproduction: Kevin had learned an off-color riddle from his older sister that inferred that a baby was born out the front. I had to take the poor fool aside and explain that a baby is born out the back side and that a mom becomes pregnant only when she is married and when the man she is married to and her kiss - that when they kiss, something travels down into her stomach and that's how it works. Anybody who had seen anything before knew a baby could never fit out the front.

Or so I thought until I found out different.

So anyway, I found out what the hoopla was about the Birds and the Bees and later on, that masturbation is NOT okay. Don't laugh: I'm serious.