The Conversation

It's odd the things that come into my mind when I am showering, most of it seemingly unconnected with what is happening around me at the time.

This morning whilst showering I started to reminisce about my days of puberty and 'the conversation'. You know what I'm referring to; that occasion when your father sits down and tells you about the birds and the bees or how the stork really makes it delivery.

My father never engaged me in 'the conversation'. There I was, hit fair and square by puberty and responding to a strong sex drive at a very early age and yet incredibly naive about sex. I was an only child and therefore had no siblings to educate me about these matters. Perhaps sensing my sexuality or difference early on, I had few friends who might have educated me with their childish knowledge. I was blissfully ignorant about what it was that I was doing with, dare I write it, such gay abandon.

My uncle once attempted a version of 'the conversation' whilst he was driving me somewhere. Goodness knows why he attempted it as my father probably would have murdered him (metaphorically) if he had known. I don't recall much about what my uncle said except that he drew upon the work of some Psychiatrist or other (Freud, maybe) and mentioned something to the effect that humans were so distinguishable from other species because we were the only ones who made love face to face. In my naivety I found this quite a peculiar notion because face to face love was the least of what I was engaging in then.

I must have said something in response to my uncle that alarmed him because I recall he abruptly ended the discussion at that point and the remainder of the trip was completed in stony silence.

Formal education was little better for me. I went to an all boys school. More than a thousand boys at our school and the entire faculty bar just one also male. You can imagine the level of testosterone simmering away in that hot house. Ironically, the one female teacher in the school taught biology and it fell to her to deliver the sex education program to us all. This woman, Mrs L, looked like the archetypal crone and seemed to our youthful minds to be aged about 125 years.

I remember little of the day when it was my class' turn to receive the session except for her closing comment. We were aged about 13 years. That final memory clinching comment to the class was;

"By now boys all of you should find that your testicles have dropped. If any of you still hasn't had your testicles drop then stay back after class and see me."

Ahem. You've never seen such a rush for the door as when the bell rang to end that class.