The Easter Bunny and Sex Education

Easter has always been a big deal in my wife’s household.  When my step-daughter was small, the Easter Bunny would always hide eggs, candy and prizes all over the back yard (there were even biscuits for the dogs to hunt out) and would leave a poem containing clues for where to search.  (The Easter poem tradition continues today for Kristi and her husband.)

When Kristi was about seven years old, a relative on her father’s side of the family died just before Easter.  She wasn’t really familiar with death, except for the death of one of her mother’s dogs.  Marianne worried about how Kristi would take the news, so she got all serious at dinnertime and announced that she had some bad news.

Obviously anticipating the worst news she could imagine, Kristi became all teary and sobbed, “You mean the Easter Bunny died?!”

*

But not much more than a year later, she was all grown up and already a cynic.  I no longer remember what bad news prompted Marianne to sit the kid down and say, “I have to tell you something.”

Kristi sighed, rolled her eyes and with obvious boredom asked,  “Okay, so who died?”

*

When she was about eight or nine, we came home from shopping to find a message on the answering machine.  It was one of Kristi’s school friends.

“Kristi, guess what!” the girl gushed.  “I got…I got…a B-R-A-W!”

*

And then there was Sex Ed.  We must have done something right because she grew up unembarrassed by the subject and felt she could ask us pretty much anything (not that she always did.)  As a freshman at Bishop O’Dowd High School, she had to take a one-semester course called “Christian Sexuality.”  The course not only covered pretty detailed and graphic mechanics, but also morals, responsibility, caring and family values.

(This is an aside, but I have to give a nod to the teacher, Fr. Malo, one of the priests from the Order of Saint Basil, the Catholic order that runs the school.  One of his lessons was about love and loss and showing your loved ones – right now – how much you love them.  He had the students take four small slips of paper and write on each the name of a person they loved.  They then laid out the papers on their desk and, very slowly, Fr. Malo walked up and down the rows randomly taking one paper from each student’s desk.

(He explained to the students that that person had just died unexpectedly and asked them how they felt about it and what they would do or say if they could roll back time.  And then he repeated the process, taking one more name away from each student.

(Kristi had written the names of her dad, her mom, me and her Uncle Dale.  By the end of the hour, she relayed to us, the entire class was in tears and all of them vowed to go home and tell their loved ones how much they were loved.)

But back to sex.  Show-off that she was as the result of being an only child of liberal parents, she was the first to volunteer when Fr. Malo asked who would like to put the condom on the banana to show the rest of the class how it was done.

By liberal “parents,” I mean her mother and me.  Even to her father, she referred to us as her “parents.”  At about age 12, in the perverse way that kids have, she asked her father what a “virgin” was.  “Uh…I think that means a young girl,” he stammered, and she found the story hilarious when she relayed it to us.

*

When she was 15, I bought her what I hoped was her first pack of condoms.  Her mother and I decided it would be more appropriate coming from me, so I grabbed a pack at the store (skipping over the “extra large” and the “Ribbed – For Her Pleasure” in favor of plain old Trojans), sat down with her in her bedroom, reminded her gently about pregnancy and STDs and said as long as she was careful and discrete, her mother and I would never ask her any questions.

*

Years later, she told us that every time she used one, she was careful to buy another one to replace it with just in case we were snooping through her purse to count the missing condoms.  Well, at least she was using them.  Usually.

“Now, Kris,” I said in mock disappointment.  “You know we always said that as long as you didn’t go off the deep end, we wouldn’t snoop or ask any questions.”

“Yeah, I know.  But you also said I should be careful.”

*

When she was a senior, her mother and I were joking a bit about sex when Kristi suddenly announced, “I haven’t had sex in more than six months.”

I told you the kid was perverse.  She loved saying things just to see what the reaction would be.  But Marianne and I both bit our lips and didn’t pursue it at the time.  But a couple of weeks later, immediately after her graduation, I took her out rowing on a nearby lake.

“So,” I began.  “About this lost virginity of yours.”

“What do you want to know?” she offered simply.

“No, baby.  I don’t want to ask you anything.  I want to know if there’s anything you want to ask me.  Sex can be pretty complicated and confusing, and we’ve always told you we’ll be here for you.”

*

And then there was the story I call “Robbie and The Hooters,” as if they were a doo-wop group.

Kristi had a friend named, of course, Robbie, with whom she spent a fair amount of time talking on the telephone.  Like all hormonal teenaged boys, he was obsessed with breasts – only they talk about it with girls today, unlike when I was that age.

Kristi found it quite amusing.  “And Robbie’s all ‘Dude, if I had me a pair of hooters, I’d just be playing with them all the time.’ “

“Well, that just goes to show how immature boys are at that age,” I said, slowly setting her up.  “When he gets older he’ll learn that boobs aren’t the most important thing in the world.”

“Okay, Mister Smart-Ass,” she challenged.  “And just what is?”

“Pussy,” I said simply.

“Oh, Steve, you’re disgusting.”

“Well, it’s your own fault,” Marianne laughed.  “You had to ask!”

*

When she was in college, she and most of her friends managed to find a purveyor of fake drivers licences so they could go bar hopping on the weekends.  One evening a nice-looking girl kept following her around and hitting on her.  Kristi kept drifting off into the crowd to try to escape, but the girl kept following, asking questions and making conversation and subtle suggestions.

Now, the kid is not homophobic, but she was beginning to get uncomfortable from the unwanted attention.  Eventually, she made her way back to the bar – followed, of course – and ordered some exotic cocktail or other.

“Ummm, that looks good,” cooed the stranger.

“Well it doesn’t taste like pussy, you carpet muncher!” Kristi snapped before storming out.

*

Saving the best for last, we move back to middle school again, and first to an out-of-town soccer tournament where one of the teams was from the California town of Clovis.  I nudged Kristi in the ribs and pointed to the word “Clovis” on the back of one of the girls’ jerseys and we both burst out laughing, to the total confusion of the other parents.

It seems that earlier that year, her class had had the one- or two-hour course on sex education, complete with movie which the parents were invited to preview before it was shown to the kids.  I found it pretty bland, compared with the information she’d already gotten at home.  Years before, we had bought an illustrated book that promoted itself as appropriate for her age group and, instead of reading it to her, or giving it to her to read, we asked her to read it to us.

But even after the book and the middle-school sex-ed class, she was still a little confused about the anatomy thing.

“Steve, what do they call that really sensitive little spot that a woman has?” she asked one day.  “Is that a clovis?”

So no wonder that the soccer moms thought we’d lost our minds laughing uproariously at the name of a team’s home town.