Once upon a time, I was in grade 7. We had a nurse come into our classroom for Sex Education. She very seriously put a box up at the front and said that it was an anonymous question box and, she would answer whatever questions we had about sex, puberty etc.
She pointed out after our second class that no one had yet put any questions in the box, and that it was anonymous, so no one would ever know who asked, and that we didn't need to be embarrassed about being curious about sex or our bodies.
After the third class, she was visibly disappointed, or maybe confused, still not one question was in the box! The box was sacrosanct, she would answer any question that we put in the box! She was very insistent, and made sure after every section she taught that day to mention that if we wanted to know more about pregnancy, or fallopian tubes, we should put it in the box.
My friends from class and I were talking about it after school. We were so completely blasé about the whole thing, so disinterested and bored in the class we just didn't care to question anything about sex or reproduction. We did feel bad about the nurse, who was so concerned about her question box. My friend Beth's mother overheard us.
"Well, maybe you three should write questions. It might make her feel better. It's probably hard to come into a school in the middle of the year and teach children if you aren't trained as a teacher."
We considered this. We were completely apathetic about reproduction and sexual health. We just wanted to be left alone. We wanted this to be over.
We consulted some Judy Bloom books, Sassy and Seventeen magazine and composed three questions, that according to our sources, teens were expected to have about Sex Education.
1. Will my breasts grow bigger?
2. What is cum?
3. Why haven't I gotten my period yet?
"That's great girls! Maybe seeing you put questions in the box will encourage other students to put in their own questions." Beth's mom liked it when we participated.
We considered this. Maybe the others are curious about things, or don't understand things and just don't want to be the only one who has questions. Impossible. How could anyone care about anything in school? It was such a torturous waste of time.
We decided to be the first people back in class after recess the next day, knowing that the nurse arrived to our room while we were out in the yard, and we would wait until everyone else had come in before boldly and openly walking up to the front and putting our slips of paper in the box.
Our plan worked, and the nurse nearly broke into applause at the sight of us putting questions into the still empty box. We felt like we had done a good deed.
She answered the questions, pointed out with vigorous relish that "cum" was a slang term and they are often very confusing and that's why we should always use the proper science words like "semen" or "ejaculate"
The next class was uneventful, we were pleased that she seemed satisfied and that she had stopped harping on everyone to put in questions.
On Friday, to our complete surprise, the box had SEVERAL questions in it! We hadn't seen anyone put them in, and we wondered if our classmates ACTUALLY CARED about this?
The question and response that I remember clearly was:
How long does it take to have sex?
The nurse read it out, and then said, succintly and confidently,
"It depends on a few factors, but on average, about seven minutes."
She then moved on to the next question.
WHAT??? We were flabbergasted, and shocked, and felt a deep pity for this poor woman who only got to have seven minutes of sex, and that she thought that was fine and reasonable. Who hired this woman, who clearly HAD NO IDEA HOW TO EVEN HAVE SEX teach the sex education classes?
We told Beth's mom. Who insisted we must have misheard her. Or misunderstood her. Or, Maybe that was just the literal act of penetration? Did she mean the minimum amount of time it could possibly take to copulate? Like, if you were already undressed and in bed with your partner, and already feeling frisky?
We could not figure it out. It made no sense. It still boggles my mind. She said "On Average" so, you might have sex for less than 7 minutes? What would that even entail?
This became a running gag among our classmates, If the Teacher tried to hurry us and threatened that "You only have FIFTEEN minutes left to complete the math assignment!"
One of us would quip, "15? that's so much time. I could have sex TWICE and use the remaining minute to throw the math books out the window."
To this day, I pray for that nurse, and I hope that at least once she made passionate love with someone for a very long, long, time. Twenty minutes, minimum.
This is quite possibly the most remarkable comment I've EVER read!!! It needs to be its own post -- I don't even have words to describe what the experience of reading this was like. Also, this reminds me of the time my best friend and I walked into her mom's bedroom and said, "What's an orgasm?" Hahah!! I, too, hope that nurse had sex for longer than 20 minutes.
Another fun fact about me: I went to Catholic school and when we got to the sex education part of 5th or 6th grade, we had to read a book -- and, very unfortunately for me, the teacher made each student take turn reading different paragraphs. Keep in mind that I was STRAIGHT LACED -- I mean, SHELTERED and SEX WAS BAD CATHOLIC lol.... Anyways, I looked ahead and I could tell that the paragraph that I was going to have to read had the word SEX in it, but I was completely uncomfortable saying that word out loud in public, because it was a 'dirty' word. So, we got to my line in the passage (and I'm making up the exact sentence here because I don't remember the one I read) and I said something to the effect of:
"People who love each other sometimes have BLANK." And I actually SAID THE WORD BLANK instead of the word SEX. And the teacher looked at me and said, "What? Can you repeat that? And I said: "People who love each other sometimes have BLANK."
This essay is amazing, Courtney! I remember once as a kid asking my dad, quite out of the blue, how my mom could have had 4 children in 3 years and 4 months…I was probably 12-13 at the time and didn’t really have a complete grasp of sex (growing up Catholic had its limitations) and to this day I still remember his reply…”Well, Kath, every time I come home from work and throw my pants on the bed your mom gets pregnant. I was left to wander off visualizing how that worked. Luckily, in short order, my mom provided me with a book that explained how it really worked and I was able to move on from those sperm infused pants! Thanks for sharing your story!!
The passage you shared about Ishmael and Queequeg is so, so great! I’ll be rereading that to my family on our upcoming backpacking trip 👏🏻 Thank you for this wonderful post and enjoy your summer of adventure!
Once upon a time, I was in grade 7. We had a nurse come into our classroom for Sex Education. She very seriously put a box up at the front and said that it was an anonymous question box and, she would answer whatever questions we had about sex, puberty etc.
She pointed out after our second class that no one had yet put any questions in the box, and that it was anonymous, so no one would ever know who asked, and that we didn't need to be embarrassed about being curious about sex or our bodies.
After the third class, she was visibly disappointed, or maybe confused, still not one question was in the box! The box was sacrosanct, she would answer any question that we put in the box! She was very insistent, and made sure after every section she taught that day to mention that if we wanted to know more about pregnancy, or fallopian tubes, we should put it in the box.
My friends from class and I were talking about it after school. We were so completely blasé about the whole thing, so disinterested and bored in the class we just didn't care to question anything about sex or reproduction. We did feel bad about the nurse, who was so concerned about her question box. My friend Beth's mother overheard us.
"Well, maybe you three should write questions. It might make her feel better. It's probably hard to come into a school in the middle of the year and teach children if you aren't trained as a teacher."
We considered this. We were completely apathetic about reproduction and sexual health. We just wanted to be left alone. We wanted this to be over.
We consulted some Judy Bloom books, Sassy and Seventeen magazine and composed three questions, that according to our sources, teens were expected to have about Sex Education.
1. Will my breasts grow bigger?
2. What is cum?
3. Why haven't I gotten my period yet?
"That's great girls! Maybe seeing you put questions in the box will encourage other students to put in their own questions." Beth's mom liked it when we participated.
We considered this. Maybe the others are curious about things, or don't understand things and just don't want to be the only one who has questions. Impossible. How could anyone care about anything in school? It was such a torturous waste of time.
We decided to be the first people back in class after recess the next day, knowing that the nurse arrived to our room while we were out in the yard, and we would wait until everyone else had come in before boldly and openly walking up to the front and putting our slips of paper in the box.
Our plan worked, and the nurse nearly broke into applause at the sight of us putting questions into the still empty box. We felt like we had done a good deed.
She answered the questions, pointed out with vigorous relish that "cum" was a slang term and they are often very confusing and that's why we should always use the proper science words like "semen" or "ejaculate"
The next class was uneventful, we were pleased that she seemed satisfied and that she had stopped harping on everyone to put in questions.
On Friday, to our complete surprise, the box had SEVERAL questions in it! We hadn't seen anyone put them in, and we wondered if our classmates ACTUALLY CARED about this?
The question and response that I remember clearly was:
How long does it take to have sex?
The nurse read it out, and then said, succintly and confidently,
"It depends on a few factors, but on average, about seven minutes."
She then moved on to the next question.
WHAT??? We were flabbergasted, and shocked, and felt a deep pity for this poor woman who only got to have seven minutes of sex, and that she thought that was fine and reasonable. Who hired this woman, who clearly HAD NO IDEA HOW TO EVEN HAVE SEX teach the sex education classes?
We told Beth's mom. Who insisted we must have misheard her. Or misunderstood her. Or, Maybe that was just the literal act of penetration? Did she mean the minimum amount of time it could possibly take to copulate? Like, if you were already undressed and in bed with your partner, and already feeling frisky?
We could not figure it out. It made no sense. It still boggles my mind. She said "On Average" so, you might have sex for less than 7 minutes? What would that even entail?
This became a running gag among our classmates, If the Teacher tried to hurry us and threatened that "You only have FIFTEEN minutes left to complete the math assignment!"
One of us would quip, "15? that's so much time. I could have sex TWICE and use the remaining minute to throw the math books out the window."
To this day, I pray for that nurse, and I hope that at least once she made passionate love with someone for a very long, long, time. Twenty minutes, minimum.
This is quite possibly the most remarkable comment I've EVER read!!! It needs to be its own post -- I don't even have words to describe what the experience of reading this was like. Also, this reminds me of the time my best friend and I walked into her mom's bedroom and said, "What's an orgasm?" Hahah!! I, too, hope that nurse had sex for longer than 20 minutes.
Another fun fact about me: I went to Catholic school and when we got to the sex education part of 5th or 6th grade, we had to read a book -- and, very unfortunately for me, the teacher made each student take turn reading different paragraphs. Keep in mind that I was STRAIGHT LACED -- I mean, SHELTERED and SEX WAS BAD CATHOLIC lol.... Anyways, I looked ahead and I could tell that the paragraph that I was going to have to read had the word SEX in it, but I was completely uncomfortable saying that word out loud in public, because it was a 'dirty' word. So, we got to my line in the passage (and I'm making up the exact sentence here because I don't remember the one I read) and I said something to the effect of:
"People who love each other sometimes have BLANK." And I actually SAID THE WORD BLANK instead of the word SEX. And the teacher looked at me and said, "What? Can you repeat that? And I said: "People who love each other sometimes have BLANK."
Ahhhh... good times. HAHA!
This essay is amazing, Courtney! I remember once as a kid asking my dad, quite out of the blue, how my mom could have had 4 children in 3 years and 4 months…I was probably 12-13 at the time and didn’t really have a complete grasp of sex (growing up Catholic had its limitations) and to this day I still remember his reply…”Well, Kath, every time I come home from work and throw my pants on the bed your mom gets pregnant. I was left to wander off visualizing how that worked. Luckily, in short order, my mom provided me with a book that explained how it really worked and I was able to move on from those sperm infused pants! Thanks for sharing your story!!
The passage you shared about Ishmael and Queequeg is so, so great! I’ll be rereading that to my family on our upcoming backpacking trip 👏🏻 Thank you for this wonderful post and enjoy your summer of adventure!
Isn't it incredible? That book just boggles my mind. I hope you love it!