Trying to teach my countrified version of sex education from my porch swing in Broken Arrow could get sticky, but hey I am up for the challenge. In the small-town paper I write for we must tread very lightly when talking about things as delicate as sexual relations. Sometimes we are even graded on our thoughts of the matter. Just exactly how did that come to pass in this world we live in? How can something as natural as being born or dying become such a taboo subject, after all God created it. As usual, once man put his stamp on it, it went from being beautiful to being dirty. The human brain can twist anything ten ways from Sunday if you give it enough time. Some orifices are for entry, others are an exit only. Just like any other semi-perplexing topic in this life I am but just a spectator. This is to say that I too just follow the rules, I don't make them. Stating without prejudice what is on one's mind without ruffling the feathers of the establishment can be tricky. This won't be as rated G as an after school special, but it will also not be XXX like a Larry Flint magazine. I love to spin delightfully between what is considered ridiculous and what is offensive. I hardly ever step over the line, but I live to step on it. Thumbing our noses at the establishment may be ill-advised but it can also be a lot of fun. Fantasy is tricky but reality can be downright sticky. And remember just for the sake of argument that there is not enough blood in the male body to run both heads at one time. See what I mean?
Of course, the topic at hand this week is one I heard around the water cooler. One of my co-workers was telling a tale of goings on in their public school where the young teen boys and girls were being separated into two groups while discussing the girls pending "special time of the month." I have no idea why it would be called a special time, there is nothing special about it. Most of the periods I have witnessed in my life were not periods at all, they were more like exclamation points. If you are a teenage girl who has been told that she has just been sentenced to the next forty years of monthly bleeding, cramps, raging hormones, and a hatred for their fellow man would you consider that welcome news? That is the cartoon equivalent to the roadrunner dropping an anvil on the coyote. On top of that, if while in the throughs of a pending PMS attack you were told to "consult with the school nurse" if you had any questions would you consider that copacetic? And, as we were all reminded not so long ago in the sitcom Everyone Loves Raymond there is no pill that will cure bitchy. And just when did public schools take over this discussion? At what point did parents just decide they would pass that torch along to the kid's gym teacher? Do they really think the teaching certificate they hold will help them negotiate that endeavor? When I was kid parents still handled that chore, however they didn't always handle it well. And depending on the grade each individual parent received after such a talk (be that an A or an F) a child could be even more confused than they were before the subject came to the fore. If you walked away with a picture of a drunken stork delivering a child to a hospital like a Looney Toons cartoon, your parents may have failed.
Now on to the subject about just why boys need to be bothered with such information. Aren't boys having a hard enough time trying to mentally ingest the rules of trigonometry and the ins and outs of the non-binary restroom to be worried about such things? If a sixteen-year-old boy is having trouble passing a driver's education course what makes us think they are ready to tackle something as confusing as female gestation? There is a razor fine line between what we think teenage boys are ready to understand and what they are actually mentally able to ingest. Just remember it was only about three years ago they were still playing in the mud. Wait, do kids still play in the mud? I may have just shown my age. There is essentially no reason whatsoever why young boys should be bothered by the technicalities of the female gestation cycle. The first time a young man looks cross-eyed at his older sister, and she pins him down and spits in his ears until he begs for mercy, he will know all he ever needs to know about that subject. This is to say he will be made aware of the dangers, but he will never be able to grasp the mental complexities. Trying to understand something that is not rooted in reality is a tall order for anyone. Chances are he will still be sorting out the details of that on his death bed.
You can try to argue the point if you want but I think we all can reconcile that if we follow the rules of the almighty when it comes to sex, we would all be better off. Illegitimate children, social diseases, a crazy ex-girlfriend who refuses to go away, and that stubborn lip lesion that popped up on your upper lip after you hooked up with that skank at the Motley Crue concert back in the 80's could all be avoided. It turns out that herpes is something we DO keep forever like luggage. In life there are no second chances in romance, only the need for a shot gun full of rock salt at a hillbilly wedding. The flower children of the 60's tried to tell us that free love was the way to go but that was long before they found out there were consequences for their actions. It goes back to the old saying, when you lay with dogs you get fleas.
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