How I Learned About the Facts of Life

Frogs Grinding 

“I know the girl has the egg, but what does the boy have?” asked our eight year old, William.

There are some rights of passage of parenthood like the loss of teeth, the scared nights when lightning etches across the sky, the first ride on the bus to grade school. These and others, you plow through headlong without a manual. In and amongst this list is the revelation of "the facts of life" as we used to call it. Having been through this before with our oldest, Aidan, I was a seasoned pro at explaining the fine art of shagging.

Aidan was easier because he got to experience the birthing process firsthand. His questions surfaced shortly after we told him that he was going to be a big brother. My wife, Christine, and I explained that the baby grows in the "womb," and not in "mommy's tummy." I was always confused as to how a baby could survive in a vat of partially chewed food. I thought a miscarriage was when a women inadvertently shat out her baby. William was now positioned for my speech regarding the dual function of the penis. He knew he urinated from that thing, but he was always curious why he sometimes awoke to an unwieldy appendage that made his morning wiz temporarily unmanageable.

I had two older sisters who told me everything by kindergarten. Along with bursting my bubble about Santa, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy, assuring me that disbelief had no bearing on the windfall from each of the associated holidays, they also told me all about where babies came from. The details were sketchy, but I had locked down the basics about the swish and flick of the wand in the chamber of secrets. No one ever told me about thrusting, though, so when I finally found out that's what you did while grinding the mortar and pestle, I thought it was kind of odd. I surmised a good rogering added up to the two of you just staying motionless while engaged in polite conversation. That seemed to make sense to my six year old mind; after all, frogs didn't move much when they bumped uglies.

For many years I thought "the facts of life" were other things I needed to learn apart from hiding the bishop. When my sister finally told me the facts about the facts of life, I was disappointed. I thought it was something new and exciting, an enigma on par with the thermostat in the hallway which I was forbidden to ever touch.

"That's it?" I said.

By first grade prodding the longshoreman with a bull rake was old news. Everyone was in on that. Years later, when I was 13, my mother handed me a book, entitled "a doctor talks to 5-to-8-year-olds. 

The Lowercase Frog
Bumping Book

It was full of pictures of frogs pushing their friends to the hospital and eggs being chased down by a maniacal horde of sperm. There was a whole section on tadpoles. I got the book a year after my sister because back then everyone believed that "girls matured faster than boys." It didn't matter that the book was written for seven year olds, I got it at a time long after my friend and I stumbled upon his father's stash of fuck magazines. Sad as it is, I learned about the finer details of the forbidden polka from Jugs.

We know today that girls are more compliant than boys which makes them seem more mature, but in reality, boys are just more likely to look out the window and wonder aloud if they'd get hurt if they jumped from that tree limb while girls are equally likely to comment on their teacher's makeup. Boys are three times more likely than girls to be diagnosed with ADHD, an affliction for which the only biomarker is balls.

Eventually, my mother asked me,

"Did you read that book I gave you?"

Playing up my external mortification, I answered,

"Yeah, but I didn't get most of it. Can you explain it in your own words?"

My mother was a leading lady right out of a Roger and Hammerstein musical, one part artist and two parts dingbat. She was shocked when one of her friends announced that she and her husband still slept in the same bed. Confiding on the phone to another friend, my mother announced,

"There comes a time in every married couples life when they sleep apart."

She was fifty.

Being a consummate dick even at 13, I prodded my mother to explain how to play Mr. Wobbly hides his helmet.

"Well, what parts didn't you understand?" she deflected.

"Just one thing," I offered.

"What might that be?"

"How'd you carry all those eggs on your back for nine months?"

She looked perplexed as if their was just too much ground to cover so she said,

"Ask your father."

Now, it was my turn to impart the ultimate life's lesson on our youngest son, completing yet another milestone in my journey as a parent. I didn't want our kids to learn about procreation through smutty magazines, from their knuckhead friends or by pictures of reptiles boffing. Mind you, we're not the kind of parents who pull up a stool to the gurney so their firstborn can snip the umbilical cord to their younger sibling. We also don't have, nor want to watch, a birthing video. It may sound intriguing to get to spy your buddy's wife's bits and pieces, but by the time they queue up the crowning, you'll be wishing for a C-section.

We always saw ourselves as parents that were upfront with their children even though we let them believe in kid things like Santa and the Easter Bunny long after they knew they were untrue. I never felt a need to grow up too fast. So to, euphemisms like "sleeping with somebody," or "making love" always seemed a bit docile to me as if the act was merely pleasant. When Aidan was Willy's age he asked,

"Why do people have sex?"

"Because it's how you make babies, " I answered, then after thinking about it, I added, 'It's really a lot of fun too."

After Willy absorbed my lecture on the duel purpose of the male organ, he said, "My friend, Keith, has two dads. Where did they get an egg from?"

"Some nice lady let them use one of hers," I answered.

He was quick to note that meant Keith wasn't related to one of his dads and that he probably didn't know his mom either. He explained,

"Only one dad is his real dad."

I never liked the term "having children" because it always seemed like an inadequately description of the journey one is on when bringing up a child. You have things, most of which will amount to very little. Kids are all together unlike anything else in life. I told William that many adopted children never know their mom or dad either. Then I explained,

"The people that raised you, they are your real parents."