Sexual Education of the Twentieth Century

It was the late twentieth century, the 1900’s as my children now call it, and I had just sat down at the desk in the second row of my Catholic school’s fifth-grade health class. Topics of such high humiliation potential required us to leave the confines of our regular classroom, and be escorted to the room, I feel, had all the warmth and coziness Roman Catholicism placed on human coitus; the sterile science lab. 

There was a hum, a buzz in the air if you will, of nervous laughter and anticipation. In the days of yore, one response to severe boredom within the four walls of your elementary school, was to actually read ahead in your own textbook. That, and chew on a pen cap until it looked like used gum and was no longer functional or recognizable (Yet we kept them in our desks anyway). The week prior however, an unknown suspect had looked beyond the current chapter of, “Your Body is a Temple, Filled With Much Potential,” to the chapters that would be covered this week, and it wasn’t long before the entire class realized that today would be the day “Human Sexuality,” would be the topic of discussion for the next five days of third period. 

Finally, some answers, I thought. Mr. Brown began to pass out papers at the head of every row. He appeared calm and subdued, but I couldn’t help but notice he had a certain sheen, a glisten of his upper brow. Was he nervous? I wondered. Surely, at the elderly age of thirty and a bachelor himself, having the entire basement of his mother’s home to his own devices, a discussion such as this must be as practical as the orthopedic heels he stood on.  

I took a paper from the stack Nicole had passed back to me and passed the remaining stack behind me. Oh boy, I thought! A permission slip? To be signed by a parent? To watch a film, “The Meaning of Life”? But I thought the meaning of life was covered in chapter two, “Temptation is the Foundation of Eternal Damnation”?  

“Film depicts in graphic detail the act of sexual intercourse as well as images of male and female reproductive organs, concluding in the final act of child birth. A gravid mother will labor a live-born infant depicting the beauty and final stages of delivery and birth. Please check box for permission or declination to view and sign for consent for your child to watch this documentary. All children denied viewing participation will be allowed to read and/or study in library until film is completed.” 

The giggling grew to a muted laughter and the whispering of all the words deemed “dirty” in the brains of our eleven year old minds. So essentially, every word aside from “library” was currently being wheezed from our grumbling pre-lunch bellies. 

Mr. Brown cut the laughter like a sledgehammer with a booming “Enough!,” the class jumped to a deafening silence, our smiles wiped away with the swift downdraft of his deep and angry demand. “This is not a joke, this is not a comedy, this is an educational documentary and should be treated as such. Bring these back by tomorrow signed by a parent, and the film will be viewed upon completion of the chapter this coming Friday.” 

I remember immediately thinking of my mother. I have to hand this paper with these words on it to her tonight. In those olden times, information was scarce and wildly dramatized when coming from peers. There were times when the curiosity was unbearable, and all I wanted was a safe and reliable, intelligent person to finally just set the facts straight! Unfortunately, for many kids my age with conservative parents, that intelligent being was usually my mother. The questions I asked from sheer overwhelming curiosity haunted me in that moment.  

“Mom, the news is talking about President Clinton and Monica Lewinsky engaging in oral sex, does that mean, like, over the phone?”

“Mom? If I shower without a facecloth and I have a wart on my thumb, will I get an STD?”

“Mom? How many holes do I have?”

“Honey, you tell me, how many holes do you think you have?”

“Two?”

“Well, peanut, how would you make a baby and pee from the same hole?”

(Pause with thought.)

“Well, don’t boys do that from the same hole?”

My mother now pausing with equally deep thought.

I remember, that was the day I began to realize the “vas deferens” between men and women.  

I handed my mother the permission slip when I got home from school. She smiled, I nervously shifted up and down on the tips of my toes as I waited for her response. She took a pen from the junk drawer in the corner of our kitchen. She checked “Permission to watch,” and signed her name below, with a quiet yet firm whisper of, “Absolutely!”I think she thought in some way she was off the hook. I think in some way I hoped it meant she was. 

When Friday came, and the “Meaning of Life” was revealed to me, I decided life meant nothing but one absolute and universal truth; I, would never, ever, under any circumstance, have sex, for the REST OF MY LIFE. 

Although it’s in bits and pieces now, I remember with somewhat clear recollection, a narrator; the gender of which escapes me, but it certainly had a National Geographic tone to it’s rhythm and process description. I remember a man, sitting shirtless on the edge of a bed as a woman in the bed, covered by only a sheet touches the man softly on his back. The narrator voice then explained, “When a woman touches a man, he becomes aroused.” The screen immediately turned to a deep red light. The entire screen was only a blood red glow. From this deep light, a figure began to take shape from the bottom of the screen. It is a shape I can only describe as what appeared to be the black shadow of Beaker the muppet, slowly inflating and forming into his fire-hydrant shaped body. Suddenly and seemingly prematurely, before our confused, wide, and horrified juvenile eyes; Beaker’s black shadow head, exploded into millions of tadpoles swimming in a red sea of confusion. A glowing, floating, white potato appeared then, in a much softer light and morphed into an alien baby made of ectoplasm and a backwards tail of brain matter. All of this, of course, culminated in the scene of a woman screaming as though her legs were being amputated by plastic forks, spread eagle, to a room full of concerned observers. We watched, as she beared down, and a purple volleyball emerged from her ever expanding vagina as I tried, desperately, yet, unassumingly to quickly count the holes I can find on the 20 inch television screen mounted in the corner of the science lab. Much to my mother’s unknown dismay, I counted less than I had originally thought.  

This, my contemporary adolescents, was sexual education before the creation of Google.