"The Talk"

I stumbled across a website a while back that was designed to fill the (huge) holes created by the (incredibly) insufficient sex education system in the United States. No, I was not searching for porn at the time. Even I have standards. No Porn at Brian's. NPaB. That's my general policy.

Anyway, the website is geared toward teens and late pre-teens and was chock full of interesting articles. Certainly more useful and in depth than anything that could be found in the YM magazine of my youth. Yes, I bought them, shut up. A lot.

I suppose it's too early to hand Deanna over to a website like that and I think Brian would be horrified if he walked into the office one day and found Deanna reading a detailed article about the history of the construct of virginity or something along those lines. I wonder if it's ever really appropriate to tell a child to go learn about sex on a website. Although that will inevitably take place when the teen in question learns of the magical relationship between the internet and porn.

I do tend to think that a child would be better served by an in-depth conversation with a parent/authority figure. I had the period/sex talk with Deanna quite a while ago. Brian, I'm fairly certain, will be useless in that department so I stepped up. It scarred me for life. I sounded like an idiot who had no knowledge of sex past the parts involved and the general motion of the ocean, as it were. Ultra ridiculous considering that I actually have a rather extensive knowledge of sex.

I REALLY think the whole thing would have gone more smoothly if I'd been answering questions rather than delivering a monologue. As it was, all the information I'd ever heard about talking to children about sex was rolling through my head and none of it came out coherently. For instance, you're supposed to label all the parts correctly. The Vagina, thusly does not get called the 'hoo-haw' or 'lady garden' or anything ridiculous like that.

That's pretty straightforward but I'm pretty sure I said some contradictory things anyway as I was attempting to instill in her the knowledge that sex is okay, excellent really and yet, definitely not something should she be thinking about anytime soon. Deanna was completely uninterested and unimpressed and spent a great deal of the time looking at me like I'd grown another head. She'd already heard most of it anyway, presumably from someone that was more eloquent than I.

Perhaps my difficulty with the sex talk can be traced to the fact that I BLOW at unrehearsed public presentations. Yeah, we'll assume that.