Beren deMotier * writer * artist * human  

The Poky Little Penis

copyright June 29, 2005

            My wife spends at least one evening a month with her female buddies at work, bonding over their male-dominated industry, their struggle to find time to exercise in a life spent belly up to a keyboard, and just talking about Stuff.  They even went to Vegas for the weekend recently, and ended up gambling very little, and eating lots.

            My spouse is the only lesbian of the group, and one of two moms, the other two being married with no kids.  They have become increasingly comfortable with my spouse over the last year or so; she is a casual, salt of the earth gal, but definitely a big ol’ dyke.  Only slowly have they entered the realm of “questions they might not want to hear the answer to,” though they still play it pretty safe; if she has a seamy past, they don’t want to know about it.

            But recently one of them wanted to know if she or I had had “the talk” with our teenage son.  My spouse looked at her blankly.  “The talk?  Which talk?  We talk about all kinds of things.”

            “You know,” her friend went on, “The talk.”

            My wife set her straight.  First of all, she said, the school jumped in with mechanics before we ever got a chance, and what haven’t we talked about, ever since we had “The Poky Little Penis” wandering around naked half the time.

            It’s like some twisted children’s book around our house: “The Poky Little Penis went up the hill, and then tumble bumble, down he went.”  Baby brothers are so useful to have around when you want to talk about potentially delicate subjects, I mean, how embarrassing can erections be when there’s a toddler running by with his hand in his diaper saying, “Feel penis,” who describes his own erections as “poky.”

            He is nature unleashed, and an excellent teaching tool (though that’s not why we had him).  A two year old can lead to discussions of anger management, non-violent solutions, appropriate privacy, boundaries, personal hygiene, tensional outlets, bonding, nurturing, paternal instinct, safety, manners and why we don’t want “Mature” video games in our house.  A two year old learns by watching and imitating everyone in the house, the thirteen year old included, as we learned when he went through a “dude” phase, though his current favorite word is “loser” and we’re trying to rid his vocabulary of “kill.”

            Thank you Gamecube; though it’s my fault he saw it.

            I hear that some toddler boys aren’t as fascinated with their privates as ours, but I can’t imagine why.  To him it’s just a toy that comes along everywhere he goes (I’ve been assured by many dads that that doesn’t change with age), so it makes sense he’d want to play with it.

It is a little hard to ignore though, so recently our ten year old daughter asked, “All right, so what causes an erection anyway?” leading to a discussion of thoughts, excitement, adrenaline and blood flow.  Things she probably ought to find out about now, instead of later.

             Actually, our daughter is pretty biologically savvy.  She can do a good blow by blow description of how artificial insemination is accomplished (though she’s wise enough to save that for those who really want to know), and her imitation of the fallopian tubes reaching out for the released ovum has to be seen to be believed. 

Our older son is no slouch in the biology department himself, he’s been so into the animal kingdom from the time he could speak, that even without the public school sex education, he’d have known a lot, though not all of it would have been applicable to human relations.

            What I’m not looking forward to is the discussion of premarital sex which will inevitably come; specifically how we feel about it (insisting they marry first is probably out, though we could push for a “committed, caring, long-term relationship”), and what we ourselves did before we were “wed”; at which point I could lie, and say that I saved myself for their mother (which our kids might like to believe, especially since their other mother did for me), or I can continue to tell the truth, but hold back on the less than savory details, which I’m sure they would love to be spared.

            In more theoretical discussions we’ve spared few details about abortion, birth control, pregnancy, infertility, adoption, drugs, drinking, rape, healthy lifestyle choices, nutrition, divorce and why working at McDonalds is a less beneficial job for a high school kid than swim instructor.

            It’s amazing what you can talk about while pushing a stroller with a preteen.

            Goodness knows we’ve missed some bases, and the school others, but we’re trying.  The nice thing about having a baby brother for our older son is that now he’s the man in the family, the “big guy” who can teach him when to keep his hand out of his diaper, and when he can get away with it.  In ten years, maybe he’ll be having “the Talk” with that little brother, too.