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Might be too personal a question for some--sorry. Talking about the Asimov magazine and youth being exposed to sex made me think of it.
I don't remember how old I was, but for me it was reading a book from the school library about walruses. Yes, WALRUSES. I had been vaguely aware of sexual things before that, but it was reading this book that the whole Tab A into Slot B epiphany happened. Can you imagine me, this mostly innocent young girl having her first impression of sexual intercourse being walruses humping?
I seem to remember not long after that my mom wanted to have "The Talk" with me. I caught the scent of it and avoided her like the plague. I was in no mood to talk about it! If I remember correctly, we never did have "The Talk". Fortunately, I got over it. Posts: 7050 | Registered: Feb 2004
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Osmosis... Eventually I learned that a + b leads to C and also my father and stepmother told me, but I already knew Posts: 9942 | Registered: Mar 2003
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Well, my parents were Christians, and they would read the bible to me all the time, so naturally whenever they came to the parts where it says "So-and-so had sexual relations with his wife", i asked them what that meant. For a long time I got nothing but vague non-answers, until one day I nagged them enough that my mom bought a book explaining the whole process and read it to me. I remember being a bit disappointed at the time, I thought it would be something much more interesting and mysterious... heh heh.
Posts: 1996 | Registered: Feb 2004
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Sex ed class in 4th grade. School nurse pulled 10 of us at a time (boys and girls) out of recess for a week. Good class -- straightforward info given with humor. Most of us said "ewww" and happily went back to being kids for a few more years.
(Had another sex ed class in 6th grade. That one was embarassing -- our social science teacher gave it to a class of 25 of us -- kids making lots of dumb jokes and getting the teacher annoyed... the 4th grade class was way better, that was the better way to do it.)
Posts: 2911 | Registered: Aug 2001
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When I was three, being carried in a buggy and minding my own business, a bird flying overhead pooped on me. It was a life-changing experience - the start of that growing feeling that no place was really safe.
I didn't learn about bees until two years later, when one flew into the corner of my eye, apparently stinger-first.
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wasps are the worse. evil things I learned about certain biolgical processes in two places in two ways in the south they separated us, gave us pamphlets and showed us a video saying, it will happen to you! But they didn't separate us in NY even though they gave us the same pamphlets until the last part of the presentation. then in &th grade we got the explanation again, only separate from the boys again... Posts: 9942 | Registered: Mar 2003
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Horse Flies are scarier than bird, bees and wasps combined. Once they lock onto you, they *will* hunt you down until they sting you.
Posts: 13123 | Registered: Feb 2002
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" Ah, it's a beautiful day, the sun is shining, the birds are singing, the bees are trying to have sex with them...as is my understanding..."
Posts: 196 | Registered: May 2003
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I just realized that anyone coming into Hatrack for the very first time and reading this thread would reasonably come to the conclusion that some of us sure have a lot of issues, don't we.
Where's that freedom thread? Freedom: the right to have issues.
PS - thanks, Mack - never thought about the blankety-blank ticks and my feet. I already won't go into a wooded area without a hat. Posts: 4344 | Registered: Mar 2003
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I had "the talk" on the way to school one day. I think it was in sixth grade. I didn't have a complete understanding of the concept, and when my mom explained it to me I recall saying, "Eww! People do that?!" Posts: 1635 | Registered: Aug 2002
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I had a big hardback A-Z of the human body. It took me until I was about 9 to get as far as the reproductive system (that was chapter 10 or 11), but anyways I read that before my mother got the chance to have "the talk" with me. However I don't recall ever finding the idea disgusting. My sister did, though....
Posts: 1550 | Registered: Jun 1999
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My parents were always straight and to the point with me. I don't remember exactly how or when they taught me, but I know I knew about it before I entered kindergarten. Just the basic anatomical mechanics and sacredness of it, though, not the technical things.
And horse flies are the worst. If nothing else, those serve as a perfect example of why New England sucks.
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Damn some of those posts were hilarious . I was told by one of the worst individuals possible, a friend and neighbor, back when I was in third grade. The same guy who came up with bizarre, creative insults involving body parts that I had never heard of before and probably shouldn't write about here. Anyway I didn't believe him at first, but he was so bloody insistent and smart that I eventually bought it, though I was still quite disgusted. Just didn't seem right, or sensible to my eight or nine year old mind. Now that guy is serving as a resident at Baylor, who would have guessed he'd become a doctor?
Wasps and bees, damn, I got stung, TWICE, by Wasps this past summer and completely freaked out wondering if my allergy to bee stings would also apply to Wasp stings. Happily it didn't, it just sucked.
I've managed to avoid the bird poop problem, though I had one classic incident in fifth grade, where I had just completed a deal, sending Doritos to Mark for his Twix, and the second he opened the doritos bag, Sea Gull poop dropped right into the middle of it, before he could even turn around and utter a word to me I'd jammed both twix sticks into my mouth. I think I developed my first understanding of Capitalism at that moment . Not my proudest moment, but certainly one of the few things I still remember from fifth grade along with the Challenger blowing up.
Posts: 752 | Registered: Jul 2002
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My father had a little pink hardback book of 19th century short erotic stories translated from the French (Baudelaire, Maupassant, Gauthier, etc). I found it in the bottom drawer of his closet, same place he kept the china doll from his grandmother (which I knew I would eventually inherit, but could not wait to play with). What intriguing stories.
This was followed shortly by Fanny Hill, or Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, found under the next layer of clothes. I never fully recovered.
Posts: 14017 | Registered: May 2000
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I got the 'Where do I come from?' book when I was about 5 or so. So by the time my brother was born 18 months later, I knew *exactly* what had gone on between my parents!
I wasn't too icked out though - I was more fascinated with the new book I got showing the different stages of baby development. I liked contrasting Mum's stomach with what the book said my little brother looked like inside.
It was a fairly realistic book: the after birth picture was all purply-red and suitably grimy (none of that immaculately clean nonsense). So I was pretty upset that Joe was jaundiced, and came with more of a yellowish tinge to him: I wanted purple!
Posts: 4393 | Registered: Aug 2003
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I've been pooped on by birds on three separate occasions. Fowl creatures!
As for bees, my grandfather was a beekeeper, and -- given enough smoke to whiff around -- I can play with the stuporous fluffies.
Posts: 14017 | Registered: May 2000
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No irreverence inteded, but I found my mom's teaching methods amusing:
When I was 6, she was pregnant with my little sister and we got all kinds of books on how a baby develops with the cool in-utero photography. I was fascinated and had a great time talking to my friends about things like amniotic sacks. It was only after carefully studying the subject that I asked one day "Mom - how does the sperm get from the dad into the mom's uterus?" She told me quite matter-of-factly, "It happens when they're very close together." For years I would watch cuddling couples in fascination, picturing microscopic flying sperm jumping between them.
It was only on the playground in 4th grade that I learned otherwise from my friend Paula. I was so grossed out I refused to believe her. I was much more content believing my mom's half-truth. Posts: 8504 | Registered: Aug 1999
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Well, that's not precisely true. I was informed by a bunkmate the summer I went to camp. I was horrified and told her she was a liar.
Cut to five weeks later, maybe a day after I got home. It was rather difficult to look things up in the Encyclopedia Britannica, when one volume sent me to another volume, and it used words I needed a dictionary to define . . . eventually, I not only discovered that she'd been right, but many other interesting things.
I found out many years later that my parents had been waiting patiently for ME to ask them questions. Oops.
Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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I'm not exactly sure when I learned about sex.
But I have a funny story about my first "date" (using the term loosely).
It was my first year at camp, and everyone in my bunk, if not the entire male population, told me "You're dating X." and seemed to imply "Or off to the guillotine!" I didn't really care either way...I was going into 8th grade, and, though well into puberty, didn't really care. Oh wait. Some people tell me I'm in college now, and I still don't really care either way. But anyways, I sort of went on the date to humor them, and it...um....didn't work too well. And then I got mad at them for dragging me into it in the first place, and it was all a big mess...oh yeah, and my camp is cool.
Posts: 755 | Registered: May 2001
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i don't remember when i first had the tab+slot epiphany, but i do remember that girls camp and sleepovers were when we would all look forward to that time between sunrise and sunset when we'd all exchange what new information we'd procured on the subject.
Posts: 3936 | Registered: Jul 2000
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Thinking about it, it was my neighbor friend that taught me what he knew (1st or second grade). Combine that with TV. Luckily, I've never had to have 'the talk' one on one with an adult.
Posts: 530 | Registered: Jan 2003
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This girl was all drama, and she needed a sidekick. She was so boy-crazy her parents put in an all-girl Catholic school for fifth grade, but over the course of fourth grade, she managed to "date" half the boys in our class, including my two-years-already crush, tell a series of dirty jokes to me she then needed to explain, and kiss-ambush my older brother. She told me once, in a conspiratorial whisper, that she had started her period, and I didn't have the foggiest idea what she was talking about. Just like in "Are you there, God? It's me, Margaret.", the precocious kid was practically a pathological liar. What Alia left out, I filled in with encyclepedias.
Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
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I had a vague idea before but it was not until seventh grade, Health and safety class, that my questions were answered.
*Scratches head* I actually was not aware until last summer that babies came out from "there" as opposed to being concieved as Otis- of the Milo and Otis fame was- from the bum.
Before seventh grade, I theorized about the tab+slot concept but I- ahem... I had the wrong slot. Posts: 65 | Registered: Jun 2003
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It was a long struggle. It all started on a "regular" day back in fourth grade. I was reading the Encylopida when several men armed with guns ran into the room! They kicked the book out of my hands, and, without a single word more, they ran out of there!
I was spooked. But I had to find out the truth. So I went to the library--only to find all copies of the Encylo- gone! Obviously something terribly odd was going on.
The mystery thickened when I came back home. All the dictionaries in my house were gone.
What did I do...?
Well, I took out my atomic rubber band shooter, then aimed it at--ooops?! Look at the time. I've gotta go. More later.
Posts: 3060 | Registered: Nov 2003
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By the age of seven, I was reading the adult section of the library. I can actually remember being confused by the story of Tristan chasing his love, who had been turned into a "white hind," and wondering if this was going to be one of THOSE kind of books. *wry laugh*
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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My parents bought a great book about the human body. There was a secion on each system -- skeletel, muscular, nervous, reproductive, etc.. I loved that book. A couple of weeks went by, and my father came and asked enough questions to know that I understood what sex was. That was it.
We were not a very open and communicative family. Something that drives my wife crazy...
Posts: 16551 | Registered: Feb 2003
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I was watching a commercial for feminine products and asked what they were for. (Previously I had been told they were "airplane stickers".) My mother then proceeded to give me a two-hour lecture including everything she could think of on the subject, including diagrams she drew herself on paper napkins. She left out a couple of really important things, for example...she told me men wanted to reproduce because if they didn't, their "things" would just keep bothering them. (Actually, I believe she said "hurting" them.) That didn't explain anything about why WOMEN would let men anywhere near them. She said nothing about good feelings. (Probably didn't want to make it sound too interesting.) Plus she didn't explain the, um...function of the male very well. After the talk was done, I got a good idea that men walked around always physically ready for sex.
I wasn't grossed out or embarrassed at all, I don't think. But I probably had a million questions.
Of course, I learned all the really important things from friends and TV afterwards.
Posts: 6367 | Registered: Aug 2003
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I'm still WAITING for someone to give me the talk about "The Birds and the Bees"... I don't know WHAT the heck I'm doing... Posts: 8 | Registered: Feb 2004
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She was so boy-crazy her parents put in an all-girl Catholic school for fifth grade, but over the course of fourth grade, she managed to "date" half the boys in our class, including my two-years-already crush, tell a series of dirty jokes to me she then needed to explain, and kiss-ambush my older brother. She told me once, in a conspiratorial whisper, that she had started her period, and I didn't have the foggiest idea what she was talking about. Just like in "Are you there, God? It's me, Margaret.", the precocious kid was practically a pathological liar. What Alia left out, I filled in with encyclepedias.
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