Way Past The 3 Rs

Well, I haven't hunkered down to work on the memoir, so I might as well blog and write something. Life's been great and busy, which I imagine it is for many of us.

A few weeks ago I tried to rouse Miguel from his usual teenaged state of nighttime inactivity.

"C'mon, Miguel, brush your teeth, put in your headgear, and then we can watch some Dick," I said.

"Dad, that doesn't sound right."

"Dick Van Dyke. Dick Van Dyke," I said, referring to the classic TV DVDs we'd been viewing before bed. We'd started with Andy Griffith. "Why does it always have to be about that?"

"Because I'm 13," he responded.

And then I was thrust back to my own hormonally driven adolescence and I remembered, with all too much clarity, the irreverent humor and endless joke about sex, sexual acts, bodies, breasts, and the like that I shared with my friends.

So I realized I can use some of his reactions as teachable moments. This morning, for example, while I'm home with laryngitis (proving that God does have a sense of humor) and general malaise, I watched Miguel play one of his PS3 games, in which he skateboards through urban settings. His self-designed character was shirtless and sported a bikini-clad babe tattoo across his ripped abs.

"Miguel, what's up with the tattoo?" I asked. I am sure at this point he would've preferred I'd gone to work.

"It's just a tattoo," he said.

I then launched into a brief discussion (OK, I did most of the talking) about what it means to objectify women. I am pretty sure the concept of objectifying anyone went over his head, as it would've mine all those years ago. But I hope my message will eventually seep in.

"Miguel, I just don't want you to see women as functions of their bodies," I said as he manipulated his toggles.

For him, it's a game; for me, it's about life and values and how we position ourselves in the world. And, as he finishes eighth grade and enters high school amid a flurry of social interactions and experiences, I want my voice to be a prominent guide.

While I willingly accept the opportunity to help mould my teenaged son, I am not ready to explore sex education or anything related with Maya. Sometimes, though, I have no choice.

Last night, as she was getting ready for bed, she looked at a photo of Verna, Miguel, and me and said, "I was still in Mommy's tummy."

"Well, Maya, you were still with God in Heaven," I said.

"I was an angel?"

"Yes, you were an angel," I said.

"What happened to my wings when I was born?" she asked.

"God took them," I answered.

"Before I came out of Mommy's tummy?"

"Yes," I said.

"Is that how babies get born, from the tummy?" she asked.

"Some babies do," I said. "But most babies come out from the vagina."

Her eyes widened and she looked at me. "Really?"

We then had a discussion, with her asking most of the questions, about how God helps push the babies down the canal and then the doctor or nurse helps deliver them.

I was almost about to tell her about the stork and just make it easy on myself. Eventually we stopped talking about babies and birthing and she picked out of book for me to ready before bed, Fancy Nancy. But sometimes it's easier to deal with a slightly somnambulant teen versus a highly inquisitive kindergartener.

Parenting. Oy. I mean, joy.

S-s-s-sex

Miguel’s fifth grade is class is finishing up their 8-day Family Life unit, which is just a code word for Sex Ed.

Last week, after he saw a film on the male anatomy, he said to me, “That was creepy.”

“Why?” I asked “You know what penises look like.”

“I don’t know. It was just creepy.”

A normal response from a slightly immature 11-year old, I thought.

I picked him up from school the next day after the teacher had screened the film on the female anatomy.

“Today was even worse than yesterday,” he said in response to my question about his day.

With Miguel on the cusp of puberty, Verna and I are glad he’s learning more details about the various changes his body and soul are about to undergo. But we also wonder if he’s a tad young for some of the topics.

Do fifth graders really need to know about AIDS, HIV, and STDs? His teacher, who is wonderful, said, “Yes, they do. Middle school kids are already sexually active in some places,” which is a good reason why the focus is on abstinence.

Miguel still protests loudly if I even suggest he finds another girl fascinating. So Verna and I want to protect his innocence for a couple more years. We know the raging hormonal torrent is inevitable, but why rush Mother Nature?

On the other hand, it’s not as if Miguel was clueless about the facts of life. He’s known the basic outline of where a baby comes from since he was 8. He asked the questions and I answered them.

Last year he got an involuntary refresher course when one of his classmates, another 10 year old at the time, told Miguel and two other boys in their class that he had a girlfriend, they’d had sex, and he could hook up Miguel and his friends with her so they could “hump together.”

“I knew he was lying,” Miguel said at the time. But I had to review the finer details of sex and reproduction with him because of the boy's fabrications. After we went over how a man and women get pregnant, Miguel looked at me as if to say, “I didn’t really need to know that, dad. Again.”

A few weeks ago, Miguel and I were outside with one of our neighbors, Rich, who was going in for a vasectomy that weekend. Rich casually mentioned having to go back in a few months to have his seminal fluid tested. On our way back inside the house, Miguel asked, “How does the man get the stuff out of his penis?”

Oh great, I thought, here comes the masturbation discussion. Miguel looked at me incredulously after I answered him.

Even though he said he all the Sex Ed. was creepy, Miguel wanted to test me last week before he went to bed.

“What is the thing inside the body that regulates it?” he asked.

“Biological clock?” I answered.

“No, it has to do with growth,” he said.

“Pituitary gland,” I said.

“Correct. What does the woman use to block her menstruation?”

Yes, he really asked me that. I said, “Tampon.”

“Correct.”

So I gathered that Family Life wasn’t as creepy as Miguel had said. At the very least, he was learning and happy to share his knowledge with us. As long as he doesn’t end up sucking on a bottle of Woolite curbside, as Gene Wilder did in Woody Allen’s Everything You Wanted to Know About Sex, But Were Afraid to Ask, I think we’re OK.

OK, more than OK.