mystery dance
uh oh. it’s time again for Family Life Ed…
BC was extremely vexed, announcing that Family Life Ed was about to be foisted on her class. yes, it’s that time of year again — the last week of school, the week when our elementary school does it’s unit on birds, bees, tampons, and other exciting topics of dinner conversation. i tried to explain to BC that this is timed this way probably because the teachers hate teaching Family Life Ed just as much as the kids hate sitting through it. and this way, they don’t have to see your faces for a whole summer, giving you both time enough to forget that it all happened.
anyway, explanations or none, BC hates Family Life Ed: mooooooom, she whined, i already know all of this stuff. i know more than the kids in my class do. you talked about this stuff with me. why do i have to sit through this? it’s so embarrrrrrrrrrrrasssing!
i don’t blame the kid. i still remember a girl in my family life course in 9th grade who labeled the women’s nekkid picture with the names of male body parts. (i still marvel that this girl actually looked at a picture that was relatively just like her own body and labeled part of it a penis. i should look her up on facebook and see whether this was an early clue to her gender reassignment.) yep, family life stuff tends to stick with you.
i still remember 5th grade: they herded us into the auditorium, let us watch this 1960s movie about becoming a woman (ooooooooooohhhhh), with it’s frightfully deep overtones. and next thing you know it, you were carted out just as quickly, with this useless kit of sanitary napkins and — back then — a sanitary napkin BELT. yes, virginia, i am so old that it was around the time that i hit womanly status that they finally invented self-sticking pads.
and thousands cheered as they waddled down hallways, weighed down by a giant wad of dogknowswhat stuck onto your undies.
but i digress.
anyway, girlfriend and i do talk a lot about these sorts of things; we’ve done so from a very early age. my parents didn’t talk a ton with me about this sort of thing, so i always took it upon myself as some sort of parental ironman challenge to tackle these topics. it isn’t easy, and it took me awhile to stop calling body parts naughty bits. and while i’m not an expert, there are certain things i know for sure.
i think what kicked me into high gear on sharing my thoughts on this topic with the girl was hearing another mother talk of her daughter, a year older than BC. this child was in 5th grade at the time, and the mom still had not discussed menstruation with her daughter. visions of carrie entered my head:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bSlffFbJ-Rsnope. i’d rather struggle with finding the right words on touchy topics than have BC hit them head-on with no prior knowledge.
which brings us back to the girl and the class. mom, she continued, you know some kids are allowed to opt out of the class if their moms write a note to the school, right?
right, i replied. and you won’t be one of them, i added, smiling a little too cruelly. rite of passage, baby.
rite. of. passage.