Let Me Tell You 'Bout The Birds and The Bees...

One of the most common cultural links which bound most of us together over the years was the commonality of The Moment When We Discovered Sex...For some it was a wonderous experience, for others confusing, and for some like myself it was a little frightening and a lot disturbing. Many of us remember the exact moment when our father or mother sat us down to tell us all about it, usually at least as uncomfortable as we were. With others it was an older or at least nominally wiser kid, say a brother of friend.

That is all changing now; many kids are finding out about it through school at a very young age, and I think that that is great...But I also think that we are losing that moment we once all shared. So I thought it would be interesting if those of us who did have That Moment shared our stories, be they funny, poingnant, or just nostalgic, whereas others may have heard some funny ones passed on...

I was 8. I was living with my artist mother in an apartment , and her brother, who was the baby of the family, and only 8 years older than myself had, after leaving home very young to see the world, come to stay with us to finish his education. He was just old enough and wordly enough to know a lot about sex, and just young enough to be still at that stage where you feel The Truth Must Be Told, damn the cost...so one night when my mom was out, and my uncle babysitting me, he felt it was time I knew all about it...and so he told me...all about it. I mean everything...things I have forgotten and will probably never know again...it seemed to go on for hours. I was stunned, disgusted, confused, and completely disillusioned.

Now the funny thing was that, previous to that, I had always laughed at and/or scorned other kids' versions of how babies were made. I found stork stories and other kids theories about rubbing noses X number of times to be childish and absurd...but I had myself not formulated any opinions. I think I had some vague notion about being naked, and bathtubs may have played some undefined role...Looking back, it seems odd that I never questioned that hole in my thinking but, as many in here will see as a parallel to my current political opining, I rejected all other positions as absurd without really having anyhting to offer myself. I don't ever remember the lack of knowledge bothering me, which is odd, for I was one of those kids who annoy older people with rapid fire questions...

So my uncle, in a bout of righteous zeal, tells me everything under the sun about sex...and worse still, assures me that I will one day want to do the same. I remember loking at him, my head filled with thoughts of revulsion at the thought of this pending and monstrous metamorphisis he was predicting, but more that that I was feeling a little sorry for him; 'Maybe you and your kind do that kind of thing', I thought, 'but never will the day come when I will find myself acting in such a bizarre manner'. I assosiated that particular part of my anatomy which seemed to play so prominant a role in my uncles ravings as being all about going pee...and the same went for girls private areas. Why on Earth anyone would want to put their pee zone in someone else's pee zone was beyond me, but I never would.

My scorn must have shown on my face, for my uncle laughed and told me not to worry; I wouldn't be forced to do anything, it would come to pass that I would want to do these strange things quite a lot.

Then my mother came home, and I, in a state of panic, confronted her on the particulars of my own parentage...and I remember my adolescent uncle sitting in the corner of the room with a look of bracing himself for the onslaught against his just and good defense of The Truth Must Be Told which was surely to come, and I also remember just the slightest traces of a dawning doubt crossing over his features as my mother, speechless at this unexpected assault as she walked into her home, looked with disbelief at my uncle...and I ran to my room, probably crying, certainly very upset.

I felt that I had been let in on a terrible secret...that I now knew that the people which surrounded me in my everyday life were, beneath the surface,up to some very bizarre and inexplicable behavour, as though I was suddenly thrust into the middle part of an earlier version of Invasion of The Body Snatchers...I remember when I would here friends of mine using the F-word, I often pictured myself, in the voice of the person who has seen the horrible Truth, saying to them " You wouldn't us that word if you knew what it meant. "

Well, years later I now know that mu uncle was right, the terrible Things came to pass, and I am no worse for it. I am glad that kids these days won't have to face a moment like I and others have had, where you learn all of it in one terrifying lump. But I do think it was something which prior to Sex Ed. being taught so openly and so young linked all of us, or most of us in a moment of Before and After..a passage which, whichever form it took, signified one of the steps out of the ignorant bliss of childhood into the dizzying realm of adulthood. I would really like to hear other stories...I am sure that many of them are hilarious, some touching, and for some people in here this thread will in itself represent that moment, as they have yet to have The Talk...if so, reader beware .

 

Lol! True story, or joke?

 

Thought it rang a little familiar...Don't, I suppose, want to share your own Moment of Enlightentment?