Maybe a Teaspoon
Re-Recollection
1957
Family, friends and teachers have always told me I ask great questions. It’s true.
Even as a kid I believed that clarity was extraordinarily important in any communication and that the best way to achieve clarity was to ask clarifying questions — “Did you say ‘peanuts’ or …?” You get my point. But let me drive it home with a story that has been notorious among the women in my family for years.
Unlike a lot of girls in my generation, I had a mother who explained the “facts of life” to me using accurate anatomical terms… with hand-drawn illustrations… which she saved… and I later unearthed. Don’t stop reading, I’m not including them here. But I will tell you that in the course of her biology lesson, my mother bravely attempted — with minimum regard for presenting facts in chronological order — to describe sperm.
The conversation went like this:
Me: “How much sperm is there?”
Mother: “Well… “I’m… I’m not… sure… maybe a teaspoon.”
Me: “OK. So, when you get the sperm on the teaspoon, what do you do with it?”
Wise Ask: What was your initial reaction on learning about sex?
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CATEGORY DEFINITIONS:
Re-Recollection: A brief, occasionally edited recounting of an event or situation.
Rude Awakening: A short piece of writing describing a sudden awareness or discovery that causes a change in perception.
Rabid Rant: A brief diatribe on a single topic, often characterized by strong and passionate language.
Linda may have to edit this one. Or just reject it altogether. My response may not make it through the filter of what’s appropriate to publish or not.
…But then again, she’s the one who’s talking about sex, and asking us questions of our own reactions on learning about sex
I was the youngest of 5 children, and the youngest of the 3 boys.
I felt I needed to catch up to my older brothers. I needed to know what they knew, or at least what I thought they knew (more than I knew), and do what they were doing, or at least what I thought they were doing (more than I was doing) – especially as it related to sex.
So I pretended a lot, just to fit. To seem cool. Or just to avoid being ridiculed.
When I was 9, I was in a group with my brothers and other boys, who were going into far too much detail for my taste on having sex with girls.
It was making me very uncomfortable.
Someone who had noticed my discomfort said, “I’ll bet Ronnie doesn’t even know how a guy and a girl have sex.”
Propelled by the fear of being revealed as young and naïve, and my need to fit in, I immediately went into a rapid-fire, detailed description to prove that I knew everything they did.
I had the body parts right. For the boys. And for the girls. I even had what went where. I kept emphasizing the aspect of inserting the correct male body parts into the reciprocal, complementary female body parts.
Where I lost all credibility was on my description of what you did next.
“You see, once the guy has inserted his thing into the girl, he pees. He pees a lot if the girl wants to get pregnant.
Most importantly, before the guy pees, he has to wiggle & shake around a whole lot. Wiggling & shaking around before peeing is the most important part.”
That was probably the last public display of my grasp of sex and sexuality.
Unfortunately, the universal lesson I did NOT learn that day from that experience, which took me well into my 40’s to learn is, if you’re out of your league, and don’t know what you’re talking about, but feel compelled to look smart as you fit in, stay silent.
Do not go into a rapid fire saying of anything because you think it will establish your credibility.
When in fact, it will not only knock you down a few notches in the eyes of others, but unintentionally position you as a source of entertainment, generating resounding laughter from others.
As I reflect now upon my professional persona in my 20’s, 30’s, and 40’s, I cringe at how often in meetings I tried to impress people, saying the equivalent of, “Wiggling & shaking around before peeing is the most important part.”
Loved this story, Linda. I can see your mother and the look on her face. My mom also tried the draw it bit and she said do you know what this is? I replied, “Maybe a telephone pole?”
No wonder neither of us recognize a thumb cover when we found it in our dorm room
OMG! Your memory is amazing. We were truly girls of our culture. :)