Today someone found my blog by searching A+Child+Is+Born+Porn. At first I threw up a little bit in my mouth but then I stopped, and choking back chunks remembered (dunt-dunt-DUUUUUNT) Sex Education...
Let's do the time warp, again. The year is 1991 and I am in 5th grade. Sex Ed was about as ridiculous as the D.A.R.E
to keep kids off drugs program. Contrary to the board of dumbasses whose idea D.A.R.E was, D.A.R.E. made drugs seem cool while sex-ed made sex seem like cruel and unusual punishment. (Bravo, board. You were successful for a good year or so.)
"Cool kids will pressure you to smoke cigarettes and try heroin." This was a direct quote from the D.A.R.E program and I remember it well because we had to repeat the fucker several times a week, out loud, to ourselves, and our pen-pals AND our poor teacher who was probably getting stoned in the back just to spite the system.
It took a few years before I realized that although cigarettes were a
drug. Heroin was far worse for you, but then according to officer Shultz and his mustache and Oakleys, "a drug was a drug." I remember one lesson particularly because we had to write a page about how we would handle the "increasingly common" situation of a strange man putting a gun to our heads and saying, "smoke this joint or I'll kill you!" I was scared shitless that this was something that actually happened until I started smoking weed a few years later and realized that it's kind of the other way around.
I digress... This is about sex, not drugs.
I was a fairly sheltered kid and clueless about sex. I knew that "it" happened but never spent much time figuring out when and how. I was shy, a late-bloomer whose role model was a
flat-chested doll that smelled of strawberries. I had a friend a couple years older who had already endured Sex Ed and liked to brag about it to me and my friends, quizzing us and getting blank stares in return.
"Rebecca? Do you know what a condom is?"
"Um, yeah. Who doesn't? Psh."
"Oh reaaaaaallly. Draw me a picture, then."
I searched the archives of my brain for clues before remembering the scene in Naked Gun 2 where Leslie Nielson and Priscilla Presley dress like plastic gloves and make-out. Yes, I distinctively remember them using the words "protection" and "condoms" so I drew something that looked like this:
I believe her exact words were: "What the fuck?"
I wish I could have answered her but "fuck" was a relatively new word to me and once again I found myself staring blankly as the bitch rolled her eyes and scribbled over my drawing. She then drew a circle. "A condom looks like this, okay? Get it straight."
"I knew that. I was just making sure YOU Knew that. Heh"
When I entered 5th grade, every day was a risk. It was inevitable, sex education, condoms and everything else. I was petrified and curious and embarrassed so when it was finally announced that we would be having Sex Ed the following day at school, I felt relieved. The suspense was making me sick after all and I could pass my soon-to-be-acquired wisdom down to a the girl who lived across the street and was two years younger then me. FINALLY.
My teacher Ms. North separated the Jimmy Z/Gotcha wearing boys from the Keds and Hypercolor clad girls, the mullets from the bangs and lead the Mikes, Chris' and Brians (every boy in my class had one of the three names) out of the class and to the room next door where they were to watch penis videos with the man-teacher so we could watch our vagina movies er,
period pieces with Mrs. North.
Oh Sweet Moses! Help me, please! I was already suicidal.
Luckily for us Ms. North didn't talk much. She drew a picture of a cow and called it the "female reproductive system," asked one of the eight Amandas in the class to flick the switch and we all crowded onto the carpet to watch Mickey Mouse point out the clitoris. Ed Note: Um, where was Minnie in all of this?
I was appalled. WTF was Mickey doing with a pair of ovaries and a box of Tampax? Was it possible for Pluto to contract genital warts? And why was Donald suddenly performing a pap smear. There wasn't a dry eye in the house. Scarred for life, we all huddled together like sheep and waited for it to end.
"Amanda G. Lights up, please?"
Silence.
"Does anyone have any questions?"
Silence.
"Good, because we have another movie to watch. It's called "A Child is Born" and it's a beautiful little film about the miracle of childbirth! Something you all have to look forward to..."
Gulp.
"Amanda Y. Lights down, please."
It had become Pavlovian. Lights down = high fever and acute case of asthma. I asked to be excused to the nurse but it was too late. The
film had begun. I don't remember much about the movie besides an obscene amount of pubic hair, saggy-breasts and a bloody carcass. If this was what womanhood was all about, I would have to stay a child. Puberty? I would fight it with a razor. No hair here. No how. No way. And the bloody carcass? I was fine with the idea of adoption. Weren't periods violent crime enough?
Thirty years later, the film finally ended. Amanda Q flicked the light-switch on and I crawled out from under my desk to politely raise my hand.
"Does it always look like that?"
"Childbirth can be messy but it's a miracle. The miracle of life! Just like that tiny newborn, you also came into the world that very way, through the birth canal and out of your Mother's vagina."
Errrrrrrrrrrt. Check please.
It took me a few days before I could look my Mother in the eye after that. I was fasting as well and speaking only in my sleep. In my dreams Mickey Mouse was rowing a hairy canoe down the Fallopian tube singing Zipppppety doooo daaaah! Not cool. Not cool at all.
About a week later, after the rubble had settled and I was almost able to properly pronounce vowels, Ms. North explained joyfully that it was round two of Sex Education! "But today you will be learning about the boy's reproductive system and the workings of the penis!!!"
Penis was always a lot easier a word to hear/say than vagina. Penis sounded cool and Vagina sounded exactly how it looked. I could handle hearing about penis. I didn't have to deal with it, not for a few years at least.
Amanda R flicked the switch and we all took our places on the carpet. The movie started, same Mickey Mouse and gang with their pointing sticks and songs about glans and semen. Most of it seemed to be about masturbation and nocturnal emissions.
"One day you will experience a wet dream, mousekateers! Now, don't be alarmed! It's perfectly natural."
Of course when the lights flipped back (Amanda, again!?) every girl in the class had a raised hand. It seems the girls of Ms. North's fifth grade class were more interested in the workings of the penis then they were about their own genitilia. (again, in the future this would make a lot of sense.)
As for me? I was busy taking notes so I could educate the neighborhood girls to save them the humiliation and the shock of having it all thrown upon them like a death sentence.
Ah, memories. Sometimes all it takes is a pervy googler for a girl to remember.
GGC
And now for a GGC Assignment: What was your first Sex Education like? I expect a full-blog report on my bloglines by weeks end.
Class dismissed.
Today, stopped at a crosswalk in Beverly Hills I watched in pure awe as a woman crossed Wilshire Blvd with her shirt up around her neck, breastfeeding her newborn with a cell phone to her ear. Without hesitating, she kicked open the door to Barneys and disappeared, bare-tits flapping in her eager-to-shop wind....
I appreciate your concern and I get the fact that I am young and "when you were my age" life was so new and so many parties and "you just don't meet many girls your age with families around here." And I see that condescending look in your eye, I can sense the "weeeeeeeell then"s before you open your mouth because it's pretty much an everyday occurrence these days. It's not hard to read your faces. 
When I entered 5th grade, every day was a risk. It was inevitable, sex education, condoms and everything else. I was petrified and curious and embarrassed so when it was finally announced that we would be having Sex Ed the following day at school, I felt relieved. The suspense was making me sick after all and I could pass my soon-to-be-acquired wisdom down to a the girl who lived across the street and was two years younger then me. FINALLY.
It had become Pavlovian. Lights down = high fever and acute case of asthma. I asked to be excused to the nurse but it was too late. The film had begun. I don't remember much about the movie besides an obscene amount of pubic hair, saggy-breasts and a bloody carcass. If this was what womanhood was all about, I would have to stay a child. Puberty? I would fight it with a razor. No hair here. No how. No way. And the bloody carcass? I was fine with the idea of adoption. Weren't periods violent crime enough?
Today an adorable little girl rushed Archer in his stroller and hugged him. She then proceeded to kiss him, a kiss that lasted seconds and when she pulled away he screamed his head off:
Anyway, I thought a Yo GGC Rapz was in order. I know I promised some Public Enemy and/or Beastie Boys but Snoop's Gin and Juice particularly fit the bill this time around. Especially it being 4.20 and all. Aren't link-illustrated mother-parody-rapz the next best thing to beer-can bongs and stained carpet? You're damn right, foos.
Thank you for happening upon the GGC. I had no idea that Tom Cruise planned to eat Katie's Plac-sack until all y'all googled that shit and found me. In fact, T-delish is probably macking some nutes(nutrients)steak as I type. Mmmmmmm. I know! Anyway, if you are *interested* in placenta eating, go here. My girls have plenty of recipes, etc so you can have a Placenta-bake of your own! Totally.
I am coming out of the blogista closet to declare,"I am not a feminist." But before you hate, let me explain. I do not disagree with those who are, I just would never call myself one. In fact, this post is about Masculists, and I'm not talking about what has been defined on the internet. For instance, a masculist is not an anti-feminist. On the contrary, masculinity and femininity are two sides of the Venn diagram. We all live together. My concern has to do with the overlap and it's equality. There is no real male equivalent for feminist. There are conservative groups who fight feminism, but I'm not about fighting, I'm about responding.
I grew up with boys who never grew up. I have lived with men, lost... Some would call them "losers" but fuck it, if women are or were ever "victims of the times" then so are many men today. (Why is it that their sisters were a success while they looked at themselves as failures?) Perhaps this is all coincidence, a southern Californian phenomenon where the boys' goals are to surf or skateboard and deliver pizzas, and the girls see no limitations on their future. I grew up thinking I could do anything. I was in control. I had the power. It's called confidence and I had it in spades growing up but until I moved out on my own did I meet a man who had it too.
Women have always had the power, and although our voices may have been silenced, we spoke anyway, as muses, and revolutionaries. Sexual power, cultural power, financial power and suddenly men become utilitarian. "Men, who needs them?" We do. We are closing in on electing a women candidate for president. We have come a long way, people. It made sense yesterday to fight, but today? What about tomorrow?
And I'm not talking about the Pixies song...
I'm scared. Really scared. Archer has two teeth now which means he is ready to eat meat. Meat scares me. Meat makes me cry. Meat makes me think of beheaded-baby cows, and happy, little, prancing lambs shoved into crates and how when I was ten-years old I cried at the Del Mar Fair when the 4-H kids paraded their prize-winning Pigs, all of who were named, "Bacon" around the ring. Cruel AND redundant. I called my Mom and begged her to buy one for me so we could keep it in the backyard. Not possible so instead, I joined PETA and got down to writing letters protesting Circus Vargas and Gillette.
Which brings me back to my original thought: Archer & his teeth. I do not want to deprive the little man of meat just because I'm not a "meat cook". Just because I haven't had a hamburger in 13 years doesn't mean little man can't indulge once in a while. (So long as it's not fast food. DON'T EVEN GET ME STARTED ON FAST-FOOD MEAT.) Because Gerber Chicken and Rice Dinners are fine for now but not for long, and legume and soy meals every night might not be his cup of tea. He's digging the Avocado and lentil soup for now but what happens when he asks for bacon with his yogurt? What happens when he wants Mommy to fix him steak? Chicken breast? Oh God! I get sick just thinking about it. I really do.
Archer is a huge man-baby these days and although I have tried to squeeze his sausagey self into the folds of the Baby Bjorn, I had to retire my favorite baby accessory to the baby gear retirement pile, eventually to end up in baby gear retirement pile in my former closet of my parent's house. Heh. (Ed: the photo to the left is supposedly some dude modeling some backpack-stroller thing that won a design award. Fascinating panel of judges, I assume.)
About two weeks after Archer was born I started with my 6:30 am hikes. I was on a serious mission to lose the 800 pounds I had gained. On two hours of total sleep, I got out of bed, grabbed baby Archer and headed for the hills. And I went every single day. OCD much? I was determined to brace the climb without the famous faces intimidating me with their ability to maintain looking perfect, even in sweats and trucker hats.
We were barely out of the car when, trying to get the backpack on with Archer already in it, I swung myself into Ron Howard and family. But instead of asking "are you okay?" I said "hello." Bryce was there, my former girl-crush and nothing says girl-crush like a baby-backpack in the face.
We kept on up the mountain. Archer giggling from the bumps, me out of shape and bent at a 90 degree angle with my butt sticking out, so I wouldn't topple backwards which of course I did, as soon as we reached the end of the trail and I removed the backpack. But at least Ron Howard wasn't standing there.
The kid still aint crawling. He isn't scooting either. He isn't pulling himself around or pushing or wiggling or gliding. No. Instead he has taken the road less traveled. The road less comfortable, less socially acceptable, the road less upright and unpredictable: the road via rolling.
Two years ago today I met my husband. Partner in crime. Baby's Daddy. 
