Early & Often

I just finished a critical conversation with Shorty. Yesterday, we were watching a movie titled DAZED & CONFUSED when one of the high school boy characters asked one of the freshman girl characters, "Do you spit or swallow?" Nanoseconds later, Shorty turned to me and asked, "What does he mean by 'spit or swallow'?" I furrowed my brow and quickly said, "You need to ask your dad," and handed him the phone. He called his dad & left a message since he wasn't available. Later in the day, my ex called back & Shorty asked the question for "The Lunchtime Poll Topic of the Week". His dad hemmed & hawed for a while and settled on, "I'll tell you when you're older" (the oldest sex talk copout in the book). After Shorty was done talking to his dad, I took the phone and asked him (the ex) what he’d said in response to Shorty’s question.

“I told him I’d tell him when he’s older,” my ex said.

“You need to tell him now,” I replied.

“Well, I wanted to talk to you first, to see if you really wanted me to tell him,” my ex said in his typical attempt at evasivity.

“If you wanted to talk to me first then why didn’t you just tell him that?” I asked. “It sounds to me like you’re hoping he’ll forget the question. To me, this is no different than [two years ago] when he asked what a condom was and I had him call you and you told him about it preventing pregnancy and when I talked to you after, asking why you didn’t tell him about sexually transmitted diseases and you said, ‘oooo, I’m no good at that. You tell him!”

My ex hemmed and hawed some more about the current situation when I finally said to him, “This is NOT something he wants to hear from his mom, so if you don’t tell him, I’ll find someone who will.” My ex made more excuses, saying he had to go back to work and that he’d call the next day to explain it to him since he was caught off guard by the question.

“Don’t you think he’s too young?” my ex asked.

“No, I don’t, because there are 9 year old girls out there offering to do this for boys and I think he should hear it at home instead of learning about it in the street.” My ex said he was caught off guard by the question, and that he wasn't prepared to answer it so soon. I said, "Welcome to parenthood! You can't schedule these kinds of questions! Who cares if your lunch break is over...do you think you can parent on paper?!" My ex hemmed and hawed some more again saying he’d call the next day. My reply (remembering that I made a bad choice when I chose his dad as his father and having given birth to a beautiful green-eyed child that women 30 years his senior have asked me when he turns 18), “Whatever.” I decided to forgive myself for the bad father choice I made and trust God for the rest.

I just finished a brief conversation with my girlfriend in Tampa (a teen-pregnancy program worker). She said she’d just come home from giving a lesson on what I was talking about. “Early & Often” is what they teach to parents about how to prevent inappropriate sexual conduct, which includes sex at an early age. I told my girlfriend that unlike my parents, I’m teaching my son that sex isn’t bad, it’s sex with the wrong person, for the wrong reason, in the wrong situation, or too early that’s bad. I’m teaching him that nudity is perfectly natural (as seen on the Travel channel yesterday while watching “Tribal Life” with the tribe members walking around as close to naked as you can get, as we played a game of Monopoly). I’m doing my best to teach him how to think instead of what to think, and in the process, keeping the lines of communication about everything as open as possible while he's still relatively innocent. But most importantly, I’m trying to teach him to talk to his parents about what he’s going through. God knows I couldn’t do that with my parents, and it would’ve made all the difference in the world if I’d felt that I could.

On a side note, towards the end of the conversation (while munching on an orange and watching the rest of Good Times), Shorty asked me what I thought about 12 year olds getting pregnant. I told him, “If you get a girl pregnant and you’re 12 or she’s 12, I’ll have to kill you. I’ll just have to kill you and be in jail. I’ll love my grandchild & have him or her visit me in jail, but I’ll kill you.” Hopefully, the “early & often” thing works, but if it doesn’t, I’ll simply have to change my name to Prisoner Number 96785.