On Monday night I was pleased to find that Noah had finished his homework without any nagging encouragement from me. He was about to go to bed when he suddenly got the same startled look in his eyes that our cat gets before she runs off as if she is late for an appointment somewhere else in the house.
“Shiz! I forgot something.”
“What?
“My health homework. I need to study for my human sexuality quiz. But Mom… it’s really inappropriate.”
Ok. Time for a little lesson in maturity. I explain:
“I wouldn’t exactly call it inappropriate. It may make you feel uncomfortable, but understanding it is perfectly appropriate. Let me quiz you.”
“Ok, well I need a little help remembering some of these parts. It’s the female reproductive system.”
Cool, I think. I own these parts! I can do this. It is an opportunity to be an unflappable parent who doesn’t blush or stutter when talking about the human body. I am a source of reliable knowledge! Bring on the ovaries!!
Noah gives me a hand written diagram that looks like the plans for a community sub-division, complete with roads, cul-de-sacs and trees. But no, it is actually a labeled map of the female system. I dive right in:
“Okay, so let’s find the ovaries….”
“Mom, I KNOW the ovaries, and the fallopian tubes, and the uterus. Those are EASY. I keep forgetting the clitoris! How do I remember that one?”
Did my baby just say the word clitoris??? What ever happened to starting with the BASICS? I don’t think clitoris is a 6th grade “need to know”. Maybe sophomore year of college…or junior year. I can’t even say the word clitoris out loud. The conundrum chip in the parenting section of my brain blows and I just stare blankly back at him.
“Mom?!?”
I snap back. My initial reaction is to punt and tell him to ask his father, who happens to be sitting 15 feet away from us pretending to watch football. I can see from the smirk on Dave’s face that he has heard every word. Yet somehow saying, “Ask Daddy, he knows” is probably the creepiest response available to me. The next entirely inappropriate response is to try to explain where the (gulp) clitoris actually is located because the diagram was awful. Nope, we would both be scarred for life. So finally I settle on the following:
“Ok, you see this little thing here,” I point to the diagram on the paper, “that is the clitoris. Think of it as what a girl might have if she had a mini penis!”
Ha! Genius! I look up at him, praying that he doesn’t ask me what it does.
He doesn’t. Rather he turns bright red and scolds:
“Mom! Don’t say penis!”
“What?? I can say clitoris but I can’t say penis??”
“MOM!!!”
“Okay, I’ll stop but I bet now you’ll remember where it is.”
The final grade: A for effort. C+ for execution. Noah gets his score back next week.
