SexEd Part 5: Day 1

10:37 AM, Day 1 of Sex Ed.

And so it's the day of Sex Ed, the day where we show The Video, and it's really a train wreck. At the very first meeting, ole Larry the gym teacher- whom I now love like a brother, such is our shared trauma- asked if our upper school classes would be taken care of.

"Oh yes!", they promised.

"Not even an issue.", said they, assuaging our fears.

"Consider it done.", they pledged.



They didn't do it.



The kids are arriving at 2:00. They will be late. We will struggle with the projector. We will show the video with the line drawings of the penises and the erections and all the little globs of sperm traveling up the urethra. It will go until 2:30.

At this point Larry will leave, as he has a golf match. Well, he coaches the golf team, so it's more legitimate than it sounds, but still, I wish I played golf so I had the excuse. They didn't take care of his duties like they promised, and so I will be left with a bunch of 5th graders, alone, with something I only just found about today: the Transparencies.

I don't know what the Transparencies are or what they show. On some level I really wish they had mentioned the Transparencies earlier, but on another, I guess it's just as well that I don't know. I just know it's something awful, though, and I will be left alone to have to make sense out of them.

Just like a real brother, I want to f**king kill Larry right now.

I get to show up late tomorrow- they 'forgot' to get me a sub, and so I must teach me life science class- but I'm guessing all the most embarrassing stuff will happen today. All I really wanted was Larry’s presence- just to look on approvingly as I give all the speeches. Alas, it may not be so.

2:00 PM: The Talk.

They arrive. They are seated. The fifth grade teacher outlines the game plan to me. She is earnest, she is trying to exhibit full confidence in Larry and I, and she’s faking it pretty well, but I do detect a hint of concern, one that may not be unwarranted. I’m trying to act casual, but I’m not sure how well I’m faking it. She hands me the Transparencies in a plain beige folder. I don’t look at them.

Class begins.

I start giving the introductory speech, hey, here we all are, let’s get right into it shall we? Larry looks on approvingly. This is his role much of the time.

Now, I remember puberty talks being awkward and hesitant, and I’ve got this idea in my head that it really shouldn’t be that way, we should say what we have to say, be forthright, say it all out loud, break the ice, the tension, tear down that forth wall right away. This is what leads me to say,

“OK, well were going to have to say it sooner or later, so here we go.”

“PENIS PENIS PENIS.”

As you may have foreseen, it really worked. That is to say, we sure broke the ice. To say the kids were amused would be an understatement. They started HOWLING, slapping their hands on the desk, rolling over into fits of laughter, now shouting PENIS PENIS PENIS at the top of their lungs.

Larry looks at me and stage whispers,

“Wow. Things went downhill really quickly, huh?”

He is not looking on approvingly, as I really need him to do right now.

Despite all this, once the kids settle down, it has the intended effect, as least for me. We show the video, we talk about what we need to talk about, we bring up wet dreams and the importance of washing your junk. We talk about why wet dreams aren’t like wetting the bed- I seem to recall some vagueness about the topic myself at their age, and weirdly enough, it isn’t that weird. We are actually doing OK.

Possibly it isn’t entirely as freakish as I thought it would be because most of these kids haven’t hit puberty yet. It’s still just factual- they aren’t, on the by and large, experiencing any of the peculiar hormonal episodes that usually accompany these sorts of talks. In fact, they are rather unembarrassingly asking some questions that they must have gleaned from somewhere else.

“Mr. Bean,” starts one kid- notable the younger brother of the 20-30 erections a day kid,
“My brother says girls’ attitudes change when they hit puberty and they get mean.”

At my core, I really don’t know how to answer this, and Larry deftly swoops in.

“Well,” he starts, “Girls are going through a lot of emotional changes, like you guys, but they’re probably a bit different in the way they react to them. We, as males, have to be sensitive to that.”

Go Larry. I did not expect him to pull that out at all.

We carry on, do OK as far as I can tell, and it isn’t until we’re finished, watching some educational video to pass the rest of the time, when I realize I totally forgot the Transparencies. They are just sitting on my desk like an IRS audit. They have to be opened, I know, I just don’t want to do it now. Well, we do have two more days of this. It’ll happen sometime.