Again, this is an excerpt from my book “What You Didn’t Learn From Your Parents About Sex.”
I was just seven years old when I first heard the word sex. The little three-letter word was said out loud on a TV show called The Facts of Life. Some of you aren’t familiar with this TV show. Well, unless you make a habit of watching TV Land.
When I was little, my sisters and I loved the show. But a curious thing happened on one episode. The show named The Facts of Life actually began talking about “the facts of life.” One evening, just as my father walked into the family room, Blair, played by the now-famous homeschooling mom Lisa Whelchel, uttered a sentence about sex to Tootie, played by the always delightful Kim Fields. Yes, her character name was Tootie. Hey, weird things were cool in the eighties, like spandex and Petra.
Upon hearing the “sex” sentence, my father’s jaw jutted out from the rest of his mouth, and then he yelled, “MATTHEW! Turn that garbage off immediately!”
Dad rarely stopped after one command. His angst continued. “You know, Carole,” he said, looking at my mom, who was making quiche in the kitchen, “I have a great mind to take that TV outside and put a shotgun hole right through it. I can’t believe they put junk like that on TV.”
“I wouldn’t blame you, Virgil,” said my mom, while beating eggs. “I certainly don’t need it.”
When my mother said this, my heart began racing. The thought of no TV scared my sisters and me to death.
My father had a serious love/hate relationship with our television. If it weren’t for the news, sports, and a strange connection to any movie made with Clint Eastwood in it, I truly believe my house would have been TV-less.
As I looked at my dad, with an expression that said, Please don’t shoot the TV, I realized then and there that sex was bad—really bad.
But “bad things” were nothing new. When I was seven, everything, at least everything remotely enjoyable to the human senses, was considered bad. In the church my family went to, unless a pleasure-filled action was Holy Spirit inspired, it was labeled “worldly behavior.” And, in fact, even some Holy Spirit–motivated actions were off-limits.
However, despite my father’s angst toward “sex talk” on TV, he did talk to me about sex once. And once was enough.
The time my father talked to me about sex was the longest fourteen minutes of my twelve-year-old life. After those fourteen minutes were over, sex was no longer just bad; it was now awkward, too.
But such is the case with parental sex talks. Sex talks make sex awkward for a lot of us. The “talk” is one of those experiences through which most people admit to learning one thing—they never again want to experience the humiliation of hearing their father or mother use the word penis that many times in one sitting ever again.
Perhaps you know the awkwardness I’m talking about. Every time my father would say the word penis, it was like a time bomb was going off in my head. “Matthew, you have a penis.” BOOM! “Sometimes your penis . . .” BOOM! “When your penis . . .” BOOM! In fact, by minute seven, penis became the only word I could hear other than the word breasts. 
For some reason, a boy, even a Christian boy, can’t help but hear the word breasts.
I am certainly not the only person who was tortured by a parental sex talk. A lot of people have experienced them. The sex talks our parents put us through made most of us want to go running through the house, covering our ears, screaming “LA LA LA LA” in protest. No matter how cool and understanding parents are, engaging in sex chats with them is rarely, if ever, fun. At least not until you’re married. After that, talking sex with your parents can be moderately tolerated—only because then you can bring up your GREAT sex life in front of them. “Yeah, Dad, last night Jess and I . . .” BOOM!
I figure a little uncomfortable squirming won’t hurt them. After all, they started it.
However, I have to admit that my attitude toward my sex talk has changed. Over the years, I have learned that my father, in the way he talked to me, was actually being rather easy on me. Our conversation was just that, a simple fourteen-minute talk. There were no “how to” books or poorly drawn illustrations or foreign instruments to help my father’s sex lesson come alive in my young mind. I mean, he did use his hands once to help me visualize how the penis was made to fit into the vagina, but that was it. Umm, that was enough.
But for some kids, it wasn’t that simple. Some Christian parents use “helpful tools” to help educate their kids about sex. “HELPFUL TOOLS?” I’m not lying about this.
I have a friend whose parents, in an effort to help explain what happens during intercourse, pulled out Abraham and Sarah “Barbie” dolls. Yes. Each of them held one of the robed dolls and proceeded to move through the actions of intimacy. They didn’t stop the demonstration until both dolls were completely naked and lying next to each other on top of a pink Barbie bed.
Yeah, my friend told me the book of Genesis has never been quite the same.
“As a kid, I was never able to sing ‘Father Abraham’ in Sunday school without those darn dolls popping into my mind,” he said to me.
But wait, it gets better [or worse, depending on your perspective].
One twentysomething told me her mom used a clothespin to illustrate the penis and an empty film container to represent the vagina. I didn’t think anything about it, really; it wasn’t all that different from my father using his hands. But this girl had a different opinion. “When I was ten, the clothespin and film container really helped me visualize the act of intercourse,” she said. “It made me see how personal it was. However, when I got married, I expected my husband’s penis to be the same size as a clothespin. [Oops!] For two months, the size of his larger-than-I-had-imagined member made me cry.”
I have been surprised to learn that many parents never talk to their kids about sex. A few years ago, this topic of “parental sex talks” interested me. In an effort to see how different my experience was from that of other young adults, I polled my friends to see how many of them had experienced at least one explanatory conversation about sex with their parents. I was shocked to learn that 50 percent of my thirty or so close friends had never had a parental sex talk.
Through that little unofficial survey, I realized I was blessed that my father cared enough to talk about sex with me. In fact, my realized blessing made me decide that it was time for me to go ahead and forgive Dad for the two years I spent thinking that a woman’s sexual organ was called a fajita. Yes, a fajita. Of course, it’s not like he said the word incorrectly; I just heard it wrong. But come on, he could have made sure I had the correct pronunciation. It’s not like it was one of the “lesser known” pieces of the sexual puzzle. I get pretty embarrassed to think back at how many times I talked about “fajitas” with my friends in the locker room during those two years. Not to mention trips to Taco Bell—I got freaked out every time I saw the menu.
Although my dad did talk about sex with me, many parents do not. In all fairness, although it’s not an excuse, the sex talk is probably very awkward for Christian moms and dads, especially those who have been subject to the harshness of the church. I believe it’s safe to assume that the average conservative Christian mom doesn’t wake up one morning and think to herself, “Oh, thank you, Jesus; today I get to tell my eleven-year-old daughter all about the outer and inner workings of her vagina. I can’t wait!” And how many dads struggle making the transition from “Hey, son, did you get your fishing pole baited?” to “Speaking of baiting your pole, son, I need to chat with you about . . .”
As you can probably imagine, Christian parents have very different comfort levels when teaching sex to their kids. All of us encountered very different experiences. Some parents are very open and honest. Others are reserved. And others don’t talk about sex at all.
To be continued…
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