My brother was born when I was just two-and-a-half, but I was a hyper-observant intelligent kid, so as soon as my mom was pregnant, I was asking questions about how it happened. I don’t remember any conversations, but I do remember my The Facts Of Life book – with pop-up illustrations. I received the book with little fanfare; sex was a fact of life, something I would do eventually with my husband to make babies.
In fact, my parents’ presented reproduction in such a matter-of-fact way that I had no qualms asking them how often they had sex. All I really wanted to know was if I’d be getting another little sibling any time soon! (Thankfully, they also explained the concept of privacy very well, so they were able to dodge that awkward-as-hell question from their toddler child.)
I told you I was a smart kid, but I should probably mention that my intelligence was accompanied by some serious naivete. I took everything literally. So one day after pre-school, I came home clutching a large stick-figure self-portrait. I don’t have the original piece of art, but I assume it looked something like this:
Titled: Sara, age 3.
Look closely and you can see that I appear to have drawn myself with two belly buttons, a confusing detail my mom noticed immediately. Always the diplomat, my mom kindly asked why I’d given myself two belly buttons.
“MOM!” I groaned, “That one is my uterus!”
Seeing as this is how my sex education began, it really should not have come as a surprise to anyone when, one day after 4th grade, I came home and asked my parents about oral sex. Being big proponents of independent thinking and figuring things out for oneself, my parents asked me to think about what I thought it was. Or, you know, they felt really fucking awkward about their 10-year-old daughter asking about blowjobs.
So I thought really hard about what the words meant and I knew that sex was, well, sex, and that “oral” had something to do with talking and so I asked,
“Is it talking about sex?”
If you ask me, that’s a pretty fair conclusion to draw about oral sex, but my parents burst out laughing so I immediately knew I got the answer wrong. They proceeded to use words like fellatio and cunnilingus and while I know now those are the official clinical words, back then they pretty much ensured I cared absolutely zero about anything oral sex.
Lucky for me but probably sad for you, there was never any art class assignment that involved me drawing oral sex.
This is a hilarious post and I wish I knew 10 year old Sara. I think talking about sex is a very logical conclusion for a 10 year old. When I was little, my older sister would take what she learned at school and tell me to ask about it at dinner. So I did. I’d ask in the middle of dinner, with a completely serious face because I didn’t know what my sister set me up for, “Mom, what’s an orgasm”. I don’t remember if they ever answered the question but I do remember them fighting back laughter and saying, “Stacy!!!” (my sister’s name)
I thought oral sex meant talking about sex, too. It took me longer than it probably should have to learn the truth.
By the time my mom got around to having “the talk” with me, I already knew what it was via a girl I took dance classes with. A few of us at the studio had formed a little clique, and one day we sat around waiting for another friend to get done with her solo class and she explained that “first the guy has to get hard,” and I was like, WTH does THAT mean??? I eventually figured it out, and proceeded to roll my eyes at my mother when she awkwardly tried to explained to me how my 16 year-old cousin ended up pregnant when I was in middle school.