The Joy of Sex Education

Sex education can be a dicey topic with young people. I think these discussions embarrass most parents, but I would rather my daughter learn from our talks than from what she hears at school. I have been operating on a blunt, but simple need-to-know basis.


A few years ago, my daughter wanted to know exactly how horses made babies. After all, we were around them all the time. I explained in general terms, but it was not enough. Not being able to understand my daughter’s exact informational gap, I did what the twenty-first century mother does—I googled it. We found a few helpful pictures of horses in action, so to speak, maybe a video, and my daughter finally announced that she grasped the concept. She went upstairs to play only to return 20 minutes later with two beautifully drawn, colored, and cut paper doll horses—one of whom was endowed with a spectacular penis.

“It’s like this,” she said unblinking. “They graze on all fours like this, then the stallion wants to make a baby, and he gets on two legs and climbs on the mare like this.” She rotated the stallion paper doll to the perfect reproductive angle and slid him toward the unsuspecting mare. The stallion’s extended shaft slid behind the mare’s tale.

“See?” she asked proudly. I was dumbfounded.

“Well,” I stammered. “That’s just… perfect.” She left the horses on the table and I put them somewhere for safekeeping. I am just waiting for her teenage years; the paper dolls are perfect blackmail material.

The tab A-slot B discussions did not end there. She eventually applied that knowledge to human reproduction. I was taking her and her little brother to the park when she asked again and we had a recap.

“Oh, gross! You and Daddy did that?”

“Well, sweetheart, it was necessary to produce you and your brother,” I said.

“You mean you had to do it TWICE?”

I laughed so hard I had to pull the car over to the side of the road.

This year, the discussion once again became a hot topic. Since she is ten, I provided more detail. She just did not understand the whole erection thing and I really did not feel like using that word just yet. We ended up having to illuminate that concept as well.

“When a man climbs on a woman, how does his thing go in there?” she asked.

“Well, he gets all excited and aroused. Blood flow starts going. His part gets stiff so it can go in the woman.”

“I just don’t understand. I mean it hangs down. How does it get in there? Does it have problems getting in? How does it know where to go?”

“Trust me, sweetheart,” I said, “it always knows where to go.”

“Well, why does a man get aroused?”

“He sees the woman. He sees her face. He sees her body. He wants to touch her, be near her. The whole act is based on love, really.”

“He gets excited when he looks at her??”

“Trust me. It doesn’t take a whole lot.”

I can’t wait to see the paper dolls she might make as a result of this last chat.