When I was a kid, they made you do sex education at the age of 13. I assume this was to benefit the children of ultra-religious parents who told them nothing, and for whom genitals came as something of a surprise.
So snickering early teens were handed out exercise books which kept us busy for hours, drawing little glasses and moustaches on pictures of sperm. And then they made us watch a tv show called “Living & Growing”. I bear the mental scars from that tv show to this day.
It contained footage of a lot of very unappealing and deeply-tanned naturists larking about, and doing “healthy” things outdoors like chasing Frisbees and other sports that involved a disturbing amount of squatting and jigging and bouncing. Also, there were a number of upsetting diagrams. Even more traumatising than seeing a picture of ovaries superimposed on Floppy Naturist Lady, was the picture of what was inside my willy. It looked like something out of HR Giger's imagination. I daren’t go near it for weeks.
These memories have come flooding back to me after a friend with children visited. She told me that sex education still exists, but has been moved up the curriculum on account of “some bloody kid in West Lothian knowing all about dildos from the age of 8 or something”.
So she picked up her son (aged 10) from school one day to find that his normally effusive bounce was diminished. “What’s wrong?” Carol asked.
“I only got three out of ten on my sex test,” Sammy explained.
His mother commiserated, but told him that he really needn’t worry about this sort of thing for a few years yet. But the little chap was troubled:
“There were so many new words to learn and I got my testes mixed up with my uterus.”
Other areas of confusion were more typical: where do babies come from? This was also on the test, and the children were supposed to indicate this by drawing on a diagram of a woman. Sammy was confused by this, as his mother had delivered him by Caesarean section. So he drew a line across the stomach for which he got no points. “My teacher told me that babies come out of the woman’s pyjamas,” said Sammy. “I didn’t come out of your pyjamas, did I mummy?”
It was explained to Sammy that he probably misheard “woman’s vagina” as “woman’s pyjamas”. Although, as Caro noted, this would explain why it is always important to shake out your pyjamas before you put them in the wash.
The other dangers of sex education are the follow-up questions that inevitably follow. Another friend of mine recently told me her two daughters had made the entirely logical, but extremely disconcerting mental leap after being told the facts of life that their parents MUST HAVE HAD SEX. “But just to get us, right?”
It was explained to the girls that no, sometimes people do “that” just for fun. Their reaction was to be expected really - “Ewwwwww!!!”
Meanwhile Sammy had questions of his own. “I’ve heard men go to Amsterdam to pay to look at women with no clothes on,” he told his mother. “Why would they want to do that?” Bear in mind the lad is still at the age where he would pay to keep smelly girls AWAY from him. ESPECIALLY if they are not wearing underpants.
Carol told him that (again) he would one day understand but Not Yet.
But then he had a question that perplexed even her – “What’s the point of flavoured condoms?” he asked. She struggled for an answer.
“Well because they – errr – I suppose – the thing is – it makes – ummm. Oh, go and ask your father.”
You see, it’s never too late to learn things. And if anyone DOES know the answer, let me know and I’ll pass it on.
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