THE Talk... Yes... It Happened

It was inevitable. He is 9. Yes… it happened. He and I… Had.The.Talk. I know, ladies and gentlemen, we've suspected it would happen soon and I told you I would blog on it... and it did happen. Good news is his siblings were not in the car. The other good news is I wasn’t barreling down I-95 at 75MPH only to nearly have a heart attack, crashing us into a canal, killing us both from impact or drowning. Yeah, I consider that a bonus.

We were in the parking lot of KFC, having just pulled in when he tells me of this word he heard. It was F*ck and he’s heard it before, but I believe he heard it from a kid or something and now he was questioning. That’s cool, I want him to question me. I can tell him what is appropriate vs. not appropriate. So it went something like this:

Me: Do you know what it means?
Son: Nope. But I want to.
Me: It’s a nasty trashy word for having sex. (pause as he has this totally blank look on his face) Do you know what sex is?
Son: Yeah, I know what that is.
Me: (Trying to figure out if he read it, figured it out, or if someone told him.) Ok. But I need to know what you think it is.
Son: It’s when a man goes into a restaurant and takes off his shirt.
Me: Wha????
Son: Yeah, you know takes off all his clothes.
Me: Son, that is called getting naked in a restaurant, which is illegal btw, that is not sex.

Now… I COULD NOT allow my 9 ½ year old to walk around thinking that getting naked in a restaurant was having sex. Of course I wanted to laugh. How in the hell did he assimilate that?! So… I had to tell him. I just said no, that’s not what it was and I was very scientific as I tend to be, explaining how men are different, women are different, mating, sperm, eggs, Voila… baby.

I don’t know what he was thinking. He wasn’t embarrassed, but his face was kind of blank, like it took, but didn’t make sense. Finally he said, “Did Dad do this?” to which I replied, “Yes he did.”

That was his big question: Did Dad do this? Which reminded me of when my Mom told me and I looked at her and said, “You did this THREE times? You must really love us” and Mom feeling worthy of more hero worship said, “Oh, yes I did!” Of course we all laugh about the story now, of how she sacrificed herself three whole times just to have us. What a riot.

It is all the perspective of the gender you are, so that was his thing… had his Dad done it. Damn, if the boy only knew.

Of course I explained about being older, wanting children, and NOT talking about this to his friends and siblings, all topics I will keep open and continue to add to… but I needed to add levity so I said, “Do you remember the time we went to visit Aunt and I took you to that farm and you showed me that donkey giving that other donkey a piggy back ride?”
He said, “Yeeeeaaahhh.”
I replied, “They weren’t giving piggy back rides. That’s how animals have sex.”
He laughed hysterically and then I said, “And do you remember when we were at dinner and you said to Big Daddy (their name for TGOO) that you saw a donkey giving a piggy back ride to another donkey and he raised his eyebrow, looked at me and said, “oooooohhh, reeeallly?””.

Then I said, “And do you remember last spring when we went to Lion Country Safari and you and your brothers kept talking about how all the animals were playing giving piggy back rides to one another and Mimi and Big Daddy and I just sat there? Well, they weren’t playing piggy back ride… they were mating.”

So now he is laughing so hard, there are tears nearly streaming down his face as he realizes all that has been happening and what he thought. I’m laughing too.

But honestly, I think I am laughing the most at the thought of one day, his sitting around with a bunch of friends saying, “Oh yeah, and how did YOU find out” and his replying, “Well… I was in our mini van with my Mom in the parking lot at Kentucky Fried Chicken, wondering what the word F*ck meant…”