The nurturing aspectis of Encylopedias and Rated R movies

THE NURTURING ASPECTS OF ENCYCLOPEDIAS AND RATED R MOVIES

by David Francis


My little brother, Jason, is nine years younger than the next youngest person in my family. Being born so late certainly has had its advantages for him. He is living a sort of childhood fantasy for the rest of my siblings and myself--a fantasy world filled with microwaves, VCR's, Nintendoes, automobiles driven in the same decade as their make, and (most importantly) clothes bought at real stores and not merely accepted from rements of cousins' wardrobes twenty years or so out of fashion.

We all like to tease Jason about this, telling him he could never understand how hard we had it. Everytime my father brings home a new appliance/toy, I always roll my eyes and start whining about how easy Jason has things.

But, of course, I am mostly kidding about it all. I am really happy for Jason and the folks that they are able to get all these nice things at last. Certainly I am not bitter about it --well, except for one little thing.

The last time I was home, I saw something in our house that I NEVER got, and quite frankly, I am more than a bit envious. Lying there on my mother's coffee table, under a pile of newspapers, and nestled next to the Bible, was a sex education textbook.

I suspect at this moment, if any of my siblings are reading this, they have jumped out of their chairs in shock. Some of the older ones may even have grabbed their chests for a moment as their hearts failed to accept this trauma inducing information. Settle yourselves. I assure you, it is true. Apparently Jason's school has started a sex education program and this book was part of a packet they sent home. I asked Mom about it, and she seems to be pretty open-minded towards the program, which I think is good--but it is also horribly unfair!

Now don't get me wrong, I am terribly fond of my parents and I think they did one bang-up job raising me and my siblings, but if I had to pick their strongest failing, it would have to be sex education. I can't really say they did a bad job at it. I can't say that because they simply never tried. Never a word. Not to me anyway. My older brother claims some memory of being told he had a penis and that girls don't, but I don't remember it, and I really don't think that newsflash would have set me for what lay ahead anyway.

Whatever the case, sex-ed I never got. Now in my family, I believe, we are all pretty late bloomers as a rule anyway, so I got by pretty well for a long time. If I looked ridiculous pulling girls' pigtails and trying to scare them with bugs as a junior in high school, at least I was never aware of it. Besides, this was the first time in my life that I was actually bigger (well, taller at least) than most girls and I had to take advantage of the situation.

But then, just as Star Trek episodes, Dungeon & Dragons, and J.R.R. Tolkien novels seemed to have all the answers in life I would ever need, I was cruelly struck down by puberty. Actually, when I say that Francises are late bloomers, I should point out that while our sex drives are slow to starting, in the other aspects of puberty, we actually lead our peers. We get acne at about ten, cartoon-like voice changes at twelve, and THEN finally some sort of sex drive.

But I could write volumes about my special pubescent years. Let's just concentrate on the basics. Suffice it to say, that puberty eventually hit me in its entirety, leaving me simultaineously desperate and clueless.

Now its not so easy a thing for a young teenager fresh out of Catholic school to get the information he needs in these matters. My biological parents were no help, as I think I have explained pretty well earlier. No, what I needed was some outside help. I needed to adopt a surrogate set of parents to get me through these years and provide me with at least some understanding of what was happening to my body.

I met just such a surrogate dad one night at a friend's house. I think I was sixteen. His name was "rated R movie."

Now this dad was pretty good at providing the visual aids I was craving, but he was more than a little lacking in hands-on instructions. For instance, in this first rated R movie I watched, our hero and heroine had been caught in a--oh what was it--a storm or something and had been sitting kind of closely when suddenly hero without a word of warning, wraps his arms around heroine, and then begins passionate kissing, wild undressing, and an exhaustive round of carnal activities.

For the next couple of years, this was my primary method of information gathering on this topic, and for the first time in my life I finally had some advantageous knowledge that cloistered 15th century monks probably didn't.

Still, as helpful as this surrogate dad was, there were some things he just didn't cover. Keep in mind that I was a bookwormish and nerdy sort of a teenager (that's not too much of a stretch for you, is it?) and all this wild sexual activity that my surrogate father was revealing to me, as fascinating and fun as it looked, also looked --well, scary. I mean, rated-R movies aren't exactly how-to books are they? Actually, they pretty much take sexual prowess as a given amongst all people. At least the attractive ones anyway. What I needed was a more sensitive teacher to go along with my surrogate father. A more nurturing teacher. And nothing says sensitive and nurturing to me like the Rn-S World Book Encyclopedia, or as I liked to call it: Mom.

Now this other half of my surrogate parenting team had her plusses and her minuses. A plus was that she was slow and methodical (and not uncomfortably arousing. Remember, you can't check out encyclopedias) in her approach to the subject and, for the most part, realistic. For instance, she didn't even bother with that unrealistic stuff like the possibility of me somehow getting a female to undress in my presence. No, this Mom went straight to the business, and there was no intricate camera work like Dad used so that I never quite caught the--how shall I say--details. But a problem with this Mom was that she had a tendency to harp on the notion of reproducing. Quite frankly, if I had wanted to learn about reproducing I would have perused Q-Rm. I suppose she knew what she was doing, but as a result, my surrogate parent's presentations of the subject didn't exactly jell perfectly. My surrogate Dad seemed to suggest the need for a lot of movement, sweating, and vocalizations. My surrogate Mom, on the other hand, merely said, and I am quoting her here: "Intercourse occurs when the man places his penis inside the woman's vagina." Both correct technically, but Mom made it sound like this was something one could do with a set of leggos--at least with proper adult supervision.

I'm not saying I suffered more than anyone else on the planet. I am sure there are many kids who had and have it worse than I did. All I'm saying is that once again, Jason is getting one more advantage in life that I didn't. Well, I'm not going to stand for it. I'm going to move back in with the folks, and I am going to get my fair share of childhood rights. Maybe if I agree to teach Jason everything I know about basketball, he will let me double date with him sometime.