The Talk

I was almost brought to tears when I found out about sex. I was in second grade and it was by accident—I overheard someone else's dirty joke at school. We lived in a rural area, and sure, I'd seen cows and horses going at it, but I'd never related what they were doing to how my siblings and I came to be. Oh sure, I knew that babies spent a good deal of time in the mother's tummy, and I laughed knowingly when other kids were told of cabbages and storks. Me, I knew how things were done. Parents got married and shared a bed and then decided to have children, so they prayed a lot, and next thing you knew there was something growing in mom's belly. The marrying wasn't necessary, I knew, because somewhere I had heard the expression "single mother" and asked my mom how a single woman could get pregnant.

"Well, sometimes," she told me, "if a woman is single and sleeps with a man, then she gets pregnant."

Ah. I was satisfied with this, but what if I shared a bed with my baby brother? That was different, she explained, and left it at that.

So you didn't need to be married, but you had to share a bed. Oh yes, I was wise in the ways of the world.

My first reaction when I heard the joke was shock. Well, maybe animals did it that way, but not us. Well, maybe some people. "Maybe these modern couples," I distinctly remember thinking. Not my parents. The idea sunk in, eventually. I then spent several years pretending I knew nothing of it and uncomfortably awaiting The Talk.

I recently asked a friend how his Talk had gone. He had been a young kid in school, and realized that he got a reaction when he asked where babies came from. Delighted, and much to the despair of his teacher, he started asking just about every day, until finally, distraught, the teacher called his parents and asked them to explain it to him. They walked to his room and sat on the bed with him, and then explained sex to him in what was doubtlessly a nerve-wracking experience, because they forgot to mention the vagina. For some time after this, my friend was convinced the way one became pregnant was through anal sex, and wondered what the purpose of women was. Men already had all the parts required to reproduce; women were just lacking a penis.

Time went by and my classmates started sprouting breasts. Mine had been there for years: two small lumps, looking hopelessly out of place, as if a sculptor had set down two balls of clay while she answered the phone and then completely forgotten about them. The girls and guys were segregated and shown film strips about periods and other puberty mishaps. We were given pads and propaganda by a sanitary napkin company. The girls in my class were elated when, one after the other, they all got their periods. I thought they were insane, and hoped I could get away without it until I was close to eighteen. I wasn't that lucky, but managed to be a couple of years behind nonetheless.

Even then, I never got the talk. After I started getting my period, it became clear it wasn't going to happen. I don't know if my parents decided I was smart enough to figure it out by myself by then, or if they simply put it off too much because they were embarrassed.

Years later, I nearly jumped up and gave my dad a high-five when I saw him surreptitiously putting a box of condoms in a suitcase my mom and him were taking on a weekend getaway.