Sex is like a hot fundge sundae

Well it's happened again. I was caught unaware and unprepared and went ahead with it all anyway. Sometimes you just have to go with your gut and hope it all turns out.

Now that my son is in 6^th grade, he is learning about reproductive health.  The teaching is a little more advanced than I remember.  He comes home every night with a sheet of paper that has some questions on it and he is supposed to talk to a parent or trusted adult about these questions. Of course I didn't notice my dear husband stepping to the front of the line to answer any questions so I took it upon myself to be the one to handle it.

The first night the questions were pretty benign:  “What did you like to do when you were my age?” “Do you remember your body going through changes in puberty?”  No trouble at all.

The questions last night got a LOT more detailed: “How did you learn about sex?”   “What are your beliefs about sex?” and “How old were you when you first had sex and why didn't you wait until you were married?”  (Ok, that last question wasn’t really on there but it sure sounded like it.) I started to sweat.

I tried to be direct in my answers and open and honest as well.  We talked about abstinence and that it is the only sure way to prevent an unexpected pregnancy.  I told him stories about kids I knew who had gotten pregnant way before they should have and how it ruined their lives. Most of them, to this day, I assured him emphatically, work in gas stations.  Not that there's anything wrong with working at a gas station, there isn't, it's just that these particular, albeit fictional kids had full ride scholarships to Ivy League schools prior to the pregnancies.

Then the wheels kind of came off the bus.  I'm not going to go into all of the gory details - you'll thank me later - because it's all too bizarre. Suffice it to say that I told him that he couldn't have sex until he was 18, that it was illegal to have sex without a condom and that sex is like a hot fudge sundae.

I also invoked the use of a visual aid in the course of this discussion - a condom - but thankfully decided against demonstrating the use on a banana. That decision is going to save me some BIG bucks later when he's in therapy.

His only comment upon opening and unrolling the condom was "Wow. That's kind of big." Which is precisely why you can't have sex until you're 18 because, prior to that,  the condom won't fit.

Folks, there's no training for this sort of thing, ok? I'm out here winging it and trying to do the best that I can. I felt a desperate need to give him all of the information I could because I was pretty sure he'd never want to talk about this again. I'll take every shot I have to make it clear to him what a big deal it all is.

Ok, back to the hot fudge sundae... He made the comment that all of his buddies were all jazzed up about sex. Thinking about it, talking about it, wondering when they're going to have it. So I said:

"Sex is like a hot fudge sundae. It looks so good, so yummy, so pretty! All that hot fudge and whipped cream. All you want to do is eat it!! Finally, you do and it's wonderful. But the next day, you have another hot fudge sundae and then another and then another. After awhile, they all start to taste the same and they aren't all that exciting. After an even longer time - say 20 years - you start wondering why you didn't order a strawberry sundae instead."  

Totally kidding about that last part - I didn't really say that. Still, I think I made my point in a strange, convoluted and bizarre way. I'm hopeful that our discussion will give him a healthy understanding of sex and what it means. I'm hoping that he'll feel safe talking to me about all of this in the future. But seriously, right now I just have a craving for a hot fudge sundae and not the metahorical kind. I really want a damn sundae. Why is the Dairy Queen not open 24 hours??