What? Your mom didn't draw pictures of sex parts for you when she gave you The Talk on that cold, November afternoon in 1978? Weird.

Think back to when your mom had The Talk with you. Hopefully your mom, or someone, had The Talk with you. If not, email me, I can maybe help. If you don't know what The Talk is, go to bed, it's way past your bedtime.

I'm going to talk about the time my own mother had "The Talk" with me. There are three things you need to know about this encounter:

1. It was waaay too late. I grew up in a trailer court AND went to summer camp.
2. She drew pictures. Vivid, vivid pictures.
3. Don't ever draw pictures when/if you have The Talk with your own daughter/neice/granddaughter, etc. Unless you want your daughter to someday write about it on her blog.

It was a cold and rainy sunday afternoon in November, if memory serves me right. I was sketching Holly Hobby on my brand new sketch/watercolor pad, and the year was 1978. Nearly every girl in 1978 was obsessed with: Holly Hobby, Laura Ingalls, Gunne Sax or a combination of the three. In fact, I'm hanging out in my pink and white Gunne Sax prairie dress right now.

Jealous much?

Anyway, there I was, 11 years old and happily drawing Holly Hobby. I didn't ask for what came next, I didn't expect it, and years of expensive therapy have yet to erase it from my fragile psyche.

Mom: "Sweetie! Come out to the kitchen, will you? Oh, and bring your drawing pad with you."

That's right. I supplied the materials for my own traumatization.

Me: "Ok mom!"

We sat down at the kitchen table, and my mom asked, "Honey, do you know about how babies are made?"

Ok, this was a loaded question. If I answered yes then I would be in trouble for knowing stuff I shouldn't. However, if I answered no, then I was going to get The Talk. Lose-Lose. Crap. I rolled the mental dice and came up with...

 Me: Um....do you?

Sometimes it's savvy to answer a question with a question. In this case, it was not, because my mom apparently then felt the need to prove that yes, she did know how babies were made.

Mom grabbed my pad of drawing paper and took the pencil from my limp hand. She quickly began sketching and no amount of "whatcha doing there mom?" convinced her to show me what she was drawing. Finally, she set my pencil down and triumphantly showed me this:

Ta-DA!!

That's right. My mother drew a wanker. With hair. Oh, but she wasn't finished. Before I could swallow the vomit rising in my throat, my mom snatched back the pad of paper and drew this masterpiece:

My mom apparently attended the Georgia O'Keefe school of drawing sex parts

My jaw dropped in shock. My mother had just, in my mind, shown me pornography. I rapidly sorted through the list of appropriate responses in my mind. I came up with: "Ohhh! It's a bomb pop!",  "Is it a sea anemone?" and even, "That's a flower, right?"


I could tell she was carefully watching me for signs of completely oblivious to what can only be If I had to describe what I experienced that day in terms of food, she had just served me a fresh discomfort and embarassment salad, tossed with trauma dressing and sprinkled with a handful of dissociation croutons.

She gave me a few minutes to gather my thoughts labeled the penis and vagina as "exhibit A" and "exhibit B". She explained how they fit together like pieces of a puzzle. She told me what came out of "exhibit A" (ewww). Then she drew a picture of this substance:

Best. Easter. Egg. Hunt. Ever.

She explained that there could be only one winner in the race to the egg, which probably accounted for the confused and/or pissed off looks of the losing sperm.

By this time, I was mentally covering my ears and rocking back and forth.

I don't really recall what she said after she drew the pictures of the sperm. Honest. I think my mind was in lockdown. GIGO. Garbage In, Garbage Out, in Cobol terms.

The next thing I remember was my mother, looking extremely proud of herself, tearing off the pieces of drawing paper with the porn drawn on them. She told me I could keep them. As if!!! The first time she went to the bathroom, I crumpled them up and threw them in the garbage.

The next day at the bus stop, I told Kristine what had gone down the night before. Her eyes lit up, and her only comment was:

"Did you bring the pictures?"

"Ugghh! NO! I DID NOT BRING THE PICTURES OF THE SEX PARTS THAT MY MOTHER DREW FOR ME LAST NIGHT!"

to be honest, my mother did a bang-up (no pun intended) job of teaching me the birds and the bees. She was just a few years too late. So, mom's out there? Yeah, talk to your daughters before they know too much to be embarassed, and before they go to summer camp. Personally, I had the talk with my daughter when she was 9, and it was so cool. She was old enough to understand, but too young to know to be embarassed.

Peace out.