Sex Ed & Spice Were Not All Things Nice
For all you boys and girls out there taking, or about to take, sexual education classes…please don’t read this post. It’s not for you. Go get your parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents and cousins, though, because they may enjoy this – my memories of my own sex ed class in the Spring of 1989:
At some point late in my fifth-grade school year at Ritchie Park Elementary (Rockville, MD), my grade took a break from our usual schedule and had our turn taking sexual education class.
We were funneled into a few classrooms simultaneously and much of my crew assembled at a table in the back corner, away from most of the classroom light. That was how we preferred it; hiding in the darkness enhanced our chances of getting away with whatever shenanigans we got into. By the end of elementary school, we were classic back-of-the-bus kids.
But, while we may have thought we were cooler and more mature than some of our classmates, we were not well prepared for our next lesson. At least I wasn’t.
I sat at the table with a few friends, including Adam. As we waited to get started, Adam led us off with a joke: “What are you going to do with your girlfriend tonight?” he asked aloud.
“Huh? What the hell are you talking about?” someone replied. None of us had had a real girlfriend yet.
“In-spect her gad-get!” Adam replied, smiling widely and seeming very proud of himself.
A few of us giggled, including me -- although I can’t recall if I got the joke at first.
A couple of our teachers soon commanded the classroom’s attention. These were the same people who had been leading us through dry math and history lessons all school year. I turned and looked towards them, trying my best to focus. I knew I was supposed to be interested in this subject, but I simply was not quite there yet.
One of our teachers quickly grabbed my attention, though. “Let’s get your giggles out now,” she said, “because we are going to be using these words a lot. …
“Penis,” she said loud enough for the whole room to hear clearly.
And giggle we did, for at least several seconds.
“Vagina,” another teacher standing nearby said.
More giggles, including uncontrollable ones from me.
Eventually we settled down, but I can’t recall much else about those sex ed lessons. Maybe that’s because, having just turned 11 and still a filthy boy obsessed mostly with sports, sex was pretty damn far from my mind.
Earlier our teachers had sent us home with waivers for our parents to sign, permitting us to attend the classes. My father was home when my brother Michael and I trotted in, so I presented him with the waiver, slightly folded after I had briskly shoved it into my bookbag for the walk home from school. He started looking it over.
“You, um, you don’t have to sign it,” I muttered, looking away from him.
“What?” he looked right at me as I continued cowering.
“Um, you, uh, you don’t have to sign it,” I repeated. “They said the class is not mandatory.”
“But I want you to learn about this!”
“Why?”
“Because you need to learn about this stuff. What, do you believe that you just miraculously slid out of Mom one day?”
“I know how babies are made!” I sneered, raising my voice. “I’m not an idiot!”
So my father wanted his 11-year-old boy to learn about sex, did he? Well, that, and he preferred I be educated about it at school, so he did not have to talk about it with me.
Less than two years later, he had a “black box” installed in our basement, a fancy cable box that allowed us to watch pay-per-view channels. He indulged in all the movies -- while Michael, my cousins, a few friends and I quickly discovered that the package also included the Spice Channel. This sometimes-fuzzy station featured 24 hours a day of soft-core porn.
After we had been watching it for a few weeks, somebody (we guessed it was my father) flipped a switch on the back of the box to turn off the pay-per-view channels and placed a lock over it. When we unsuccessfully tried to watch the Spice Channel again, Michael crouched behind the box and figured out how to remove the lock. We then flipped our new favorite channel back on. Move over ESPN and Home Team Sports!
For the next five or so years, until we bored of the channel, nobody bothered to replace the lock. My father has no recollection of this, but I am fairly certain he knew we were watching what we came to call “The Learning Channel” and was satisfied with that. Another educational tool absolved him from having to talk to his kids about sex – although Mom made sure to talk to me and my brothers about it some time in our preteen years.
Alas, I digress. That day in fifth grade, my father signed the waiver, handed it back to me and watched me reluctantly shove it back into my bookbag. I was soon off to school again to learn about penises and vaginas -- and of course, inspecting gadgets.
Read more vignettes like this in my new book, Death of a Childhood: A Memoir of 1989 and the “Why Not?” Baltimore Orioles.
For more about me and the book, check out my website.
