The Miracle of Birth or Remembering Sex Education Class

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.