The universe found it fitting to entrust me with living things. Namely, my children. The thing about children is that they’re always learning stuff, and they always have questions about stuff. Periodically, they hit me with some stuff that I’m just not ready for. “Why do people smoke crack?” “What are pubes?” “What does masturbate mean?” These are all questions that I’ve had to field, seemingly out the blue.
I must say, my skills are pretty sharp, and any question they’re big enough to ask, I’m big enough to answer. This comes from me being six, asking my pops where babies come from, he runs down the whole “Well, the dad has the sperm and the mom has the egg” jazz. Yeah, I get all that, but I’m also knowing that we’re talking about two separate individuals, so how does YOUR shit get to HER shit? He never answered me. I finally got pissed and gave the six year old equivalent of “This is some bullshit!” (Had this taken place when I was seven, I quite probably would have said “This is some bullshit!” as by then, I was a fluent cusser.) My folks were dropping kids like first period calculus. I needed to know what the hell was going on.
So, as I said, I like to answer my kids’ questions. I do it in a manner appropriate for their age, and I try to keep it as simple as possible. Despite this, I found myself unprepared for Monday night’s shenanigans.
The kids and I are watching wrestling. Of course, it’s all contrived, so they’ve got the excessive drama for show. A guy’s arm is pinned behind his head, but he had an obviously free hand, which annoyed my son. Greatly. His annoyance was so great, in fact, that he shouted out, “USE YOUR FREE HAND DILDO!”
Melanie = dead.
Now, he had obviously learned this new word, that he thought was REALLY cool. The look on his face told me that every moment of his life had been lived so that he could experience this! This greatness. The utterance of “dildo.”
I look at my kid (thankfully, his sister was not around) with the strength of the ancestors keeping me from totally losing my shit and laughing all over the room, and I calmly ask, “Dude…where did you hear that word?”
“At school.”
“Wha? At WHAT?”
“Yeah. Everybody says it.” (Really? Everybody says it? Everybody? “Class, I’m returning your spelling test. Study harder next time dildoes?”) “You know, it’s like when someone is being dumb.”
“Dude. No. That’s not what it is. And, it’s actually not an appropriate word for you to be throwing around?”
“Okay. But why?”
“Well.” *long pause* “It’s an adult thing.”
“What? Mom, you’re confusing me. What is a dildo.”
YES ladies and gentlemen! This is the moment EVERY mother waits for. To have to explain to her kid the delightful world of adult toys and, uh, marital aids.
This one is a doozy? I don’t even know where to start. “Well son, when a woman and a woman really care about one another…” Yeah. No. So, I try to give him warning that I’m gonna drop something heavy on him.
“Well, I mean, I can tell you, but are you SURE you want to know.”
“Yes.” I guess if someone did all that hemming and hawing, I would have to know too. But then it dawned on me, “Stupid, you don’t have to give him a tutorial on how to use it. Stop being a punk and tell him what it is.”
“Okay. Yeah. It’s, um, a fake penis.”
And the look on my kid’s face as he tried to figure out why in the fuck someone would want a fake penis. Well, that just made the 15 hours of labor followed by a C-section ALL worthwhile.
