Holy Hormones, Batman!

Last night, my not-quite-yet-even-eleven-year-old son let fly with the news that not one, not two, but THREE girls have "asked him out on DATES" over the last few days.

If you need me, I'll be the one weeping over the baby photo albums and sucking my thumb....

Is It a Bad Thing....

... that when Garrick (age 10) asked me last night what "lust" was, my first thought was "Oh good! Blog material!"?

Just wondering.

Television Intervention

We have a strange television situation in my house. I can't stand paying any superfluous money to our local monopoly cable provider (the name of which rhymes with..... um.... bombast), so we decided a couple of years ago to only pay for the most basic cable service (just to get a signal), and to subscribe to Netflix instead. We thereby both Stick it to the Man and also get to watch what we really want to watch, instead of hundreds of channels of drivel. Aren't we clever (and cheap frugal)?

(It's probably worthwhile to point out that I grew up with no television in the house AT ALL, and Michael grew up eating frozen dinners on trays in front of the TV most nights. And, of course, I am now the one who needs an hour or more of TV before bedtime in order to fall asleep, while Michael stoically struggles to read the latest Thomas Pynchon opus with reruns of "Scrubs" as background noise. Dudes, marriage is all about compromise.)

The It's-Not-TV-It's-Netflix thing worked pretty well, for a while. We watched "Sex and the City" and "24" and "Curb Your Enthusiasm" and "Six Feet Under" and "The Sopranos." After the kids went to bed, we watched an episode (or two) or a movie (or a portion thereof) and then hit the hay. It was very civilized, I got to bed sort-of mostly on time, and best of all, there were no commercials.

Then we got a new TV.

About 18 months ago, we succumbed to the high-definition flat-screen hype and got a relatively modest set for the master bedroom (the only room in the house with a TV). It's pretty and shiny and you can see the razor-sharp picture without squinting. I may have made out with it a little.

Then Michael got hold of the remote control and the owner's manual and he pushed a few buttons and ALL OF A SUDDEN, there were a gazillion times twenty channels showing up. And some of them were playing cool movies, like "Sense and Sensibility" and "King Kong"! We kept channel-surfing into movies-in-progress, surfing away, and then trying to come back and find said movies and not being able to. It was very very weird, and I suggested that we'd fallen into a "Twilight Zone" episode akin to the classic episode of "Friends" where the guys are suddenly getting free porn on their TV, and refuse to turn it off for fear of offending the TV Porn Gods and losing their free porn.

You know where this is going, right?

After making this comment, I went downstairs for a glass of water, came back up, and found our TV set to porn (bad porn) and Michael cackling gleefully. Thus convinced we had entered an alternate TV dimension, we kept channel surfing and trying (and failing) to get a handle on which channels were showing the good movies (and not the bad porn). Because

Fake Boobs: Iz not the sexay.

It wasn't until a few days later when we surfed into a showing of the awful Nicholas Cage movie "World Trade Center" that the light bulb clicked on. The movie skips around a bit and there are (mercifully) story lines without Nicholas Cage, and we entered at one of those points. When the story segued back to the Nicholas Cage story line, ALL OF A SUDDEN the movie began to fast forward. On our TV screen. Without any intervention from us.

Not only did we have serious TV gremlins, they had taste! I instantly forgave them for the bad porn -- gremlins who blip over Nicholas Cage are welcome in my TV set any old time.

It took only a few minutes for us to realize what was really happening (because we are smart like that): our fancy-pants new TV was picking up the signals from all of our neighbors' On Demand selections. Whatever they are watching, we can watch. From bad porn to Jane Austen to Nicholas Cage movies, man, it's all in there. You just have to be willing to channel surf and catch it in a timely manner. (And also try not to dwell too much on WHICH neighbors are watching WHAT, 'cause, Dudes. Really. Bad. Porn.)

As you might have guessed, this is a double-edged sword. Because the grass might always be greener on another channel, and someone down the street might be watching the episode of "The Tudors" that I missed, my channel surfing has gotten OUT OF HAND, as I'm sure Michael would agree. The Netflix account lies languishing and neglected, good only for episodes of "24" that Michael watches while riding the stationary bike. An intervention is clearly needed. "Top Chef" ends this week, and then I'm going to fall off the cliff For Realz.

With the exception of a few semi-decent movies on the Universal HD Channel (more about which tomorrow), my TV watching is clearly in need of an intervention. I end up staying up much too late, chasing that ever-elusive show or movie fragment that will provide sufficient distraction for my brain to turn itself off so I can go to sleep. For the love of all that's holy, make me some Netflix suggestions in the comments. One-hour episodics would be best. Big fat smoochy thanks in advance.

The Sex Post

Quin finished his Health & Human Sexuality cycle in school last Friday, and may I state for the record that I'm Shrek-green with envy? I wish I had had such a thorough education in human sexuality at his age (11-and-a-half). Over the course of the six-week cycle, his homework has included such tasks as seeking out a definition for premenstrual syndrome, correctly identifying the function of the vas deferens, and locating the clitoris on an anatomically-very-correct line drawing. His Health & Human Sexuality teacher is a goddess, and I want to take her home with me, wrap her up in a cozy cashmere pashmina and feed her bonbons.

(Imagine the bother and anguish we all could have avoided if the men of our generation had known about PMS and where to locate the clitoris so early in the game....)

Quin tends to be a bit hesitant about sharing his inner thoughts and questions with us parental types, so it wasn't entirely clear to me just HOW far this education had gone until we spent some time together a few weeks ago prepping for a quiz. The review sheet was a round-up of his-and-hers sexual glands, organs, and cells, and we were doing speed review. Male sex cell -- sperm, check. Female sex cell -- egg, check. Then I asked him if he knew what happened when the sperm and egg get together.

"Fertilization." And then? "A baby." Paaaaause. "And, I know stuff I wish I didn't know." Such as? "I know how the sperm and the egg get together."

All righty then.

I blathered something about how while it may seem icky and unnecessary to know this stuff now, it's really important to learn it before puberty dials all the way up to eleven, because that's when common sense can take a leave of absence (not enough blood reaching the brain, dontcha know). That he can put this knowledge in his back pocket for when he needs it, waaaaaay down the road. Blah blah blah blithering mom-cakes. Then I ruffled his head, proclaimed him well-prepared for his quiz, and sent him off to build Bionciles (which, last I checked, you can't catch an STD from).

But the discussion, and the topic, have nagged at me for weeks now. We parents who are lucky not to live in abstinence-curriculum-only school districts (grrr) are incredibly fortunate -- we will have kids who are knowledgeable about the biology, who know what to expect from their developing bodies, and who will know how to stay safe (and hopefully exercise that knowledge when appropriate). But as thorough as that is, for me it's only part of the picture.

How do we teach our kids to enjoy and embrace their sexuality? To not be ashamed or afraid of it, but still behave in appropriate ways? How do we impart a sex-positive message without compromising safety? This question is haunting me these days.

I remember very little about the school-based sex ed I received -- I remember my 6th grade class being separated by gender and learning about menstruation with the girls, but not much else. The parental messages I received where entirely cautionary in nature -- don't do that, watch out because he might want to do this or the other thing, whatever you do, don't have sex, ohmigod you had sex, I thought you were smarter than that (nevermind that I was smart enough to use birth control, which is how they found out in the first damn place!).

Now, I'm not saying that I was scarred for life by all the cautionary messages I received, but they left me nothing to fall back on when I was trying to make peace with my body as a young adult. After a period of extreme acting-out, I had no road map to a healthy sexuality for myself, and boy, what I wouldn't give to be able to wind the clock back on that one. The therapy bills alone, when adjusted for inflation, would've paid for a decent used sportscar.

And I'm far from alone in this. The number of my friends, both real and virtual, who have scarred sexual psyches is really astonishing. Some victims of direct (or emotional) abuse, some not, all are struggling to find a way for themselves without that essential context of what a healthy sexuality might look and feel like. And don't we all have much better ways we'd like to be spending our time and energy? Isn't it liberating to imagine what it would feel like for these issues to gently drift away from us, to imagine how life would be without this ongoing struggle?...

When I think of what I want for my kids as they grow, certainly being safe and happy are the highest priorities. But to be honest, I don't really care whether they ever get serious about learning an instrument, playing sports, or getting into an Ivy League university. What I care about -- what I've always cared about -- is that they are able to find the fun in whatever they do and be proud of themselves, that they learn to communicate well, connect with, and care for other people, and that the petty neuroses of life in the 21st century pass them by. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad I stuck with piano as long as I did and the Ivy League education has afforded me wonderful opportunities. But I'd trade them both (and more) for an earlier, more peaceful acceptance of myself.

What do you think?

Last Week

I said the word "clitoris" to my 11-year-old son. My head then exploded and I died.

That is all.

Cognitive Dissonance

Quinlan started his four-week-long Health Class rotation this week.

While signing the permission slip yesterday my rational mind almost blew a fuse at the realization that Quin is likely to be the only kid in middle school who both knows how HIV/AIDS is transmitted and believes in Santa Claus.

Is such a juxtaposition even possible in this universe?.........

Crawling Toward the Finish Line

It is probably just the sleep deprivation, but I've been truly flailing around for blog topics this week. Thank god Aetna gave me something to rant about, or y'all would have been subjected to a week of pointless mumblings. But in Two! More! Days! NaBloPoMo will be over, and that particular pressure, at least, will ease.

SO. I was out walking Theo last night and banged into a neighbor/casual acquaintance who was out walking her dog. Theo luuuuuuuurvs her pooch, so we stopped to say hello and how-ya-doing. Turns out that M's husband is in the process of leaving her, and she's in that emotional state where it's impossible to answer a casual question lightly, so we ended up standing on the dark sidewalk and chatting for a good fifteen minutes.

Now, this is a woman with whom I am friendly, but we are not friends in any more than a casual way. But you know how it is sometimes with the raw wounds and the over-sharing, right? It turns out that M's husband of 25 years has been cheating on her for 23 of those years, with various other women. He has apparently finally found someone "worth leaving M for" and is making her (M's) life as brutally miserable as he can on his way out the door. Needless to say, M is devastated and cannot yet envision being able to pick up the pieces.

I was as supportive and encouraging as I could be while Theo was sniffing her dog's butt.

What gets me most, I think, is the idea that someone could live in the same house with you for 25 years and be living a lie, day in and day out, for 23 of those goddamn years. I'm no dewy-eyed romantic -- 17 years of marriage will knock that out of you pretty quickly -- but I can't imagine the sheer energy that went into all that falsehood.

I came home from the walk chilled to the bone -- I should have worn gloves, dammit -- and incredibly thankful for what Michael and I have built between us. There have been some dark and scary times in the last 17 years, but honesty has always gotten us through. What a relief it is to have a partner you can always trust not to run when you tell them your darkest, most hidden secrets.

I wish the same for you in your lives, dear internets.