What we learn about sex when we’re small

This weekend Port Townsend had its 12th Film Festival.  One of the films was about a little girl who uses a medical journal of her father’s to learn about adolescent changes and to educate a little boy on her Dad’s ranch with it as well. Just reading about the film brought up so many memories, I thought I would share them.  When I was about ten, a girlfriend and I decided to draw pictures of a man and a woman having sex, because neither of us could imagine how it might look, or how a man would be able to lie, or sit, for that matter, and be able to put his penis inside a woman.  It seemed a physically impossible task to both of us.  I don’t remember if I even knew what an erection was in those days.  As I recall, our pictures were hilarious.  I showed him sitting astride the woman! Smart little me….When I was even younger a girlfriend and I wanted to see what ‘our privates’ looked like.  Each of us would sit on the floor while the other put one foot up on the toilet seat.  Her mother found us that way, called me a ‘dirty little girl’ and made me leave the house.  I don’t remember whether I was the one sitting or with a raised leg.  My mom told me that what we had done was totally normal and that the mother had ‘problems.’  I don’t know that I really believed her.  My mom also told me, when I was about twelve or thirteen, that I would want to experience some things with boys. Hmmm.  She said they might want to hold my hand, which would feel good, and kiss me, which might feel even better, and eventually, touch my breasts.  That was as far as it went.  ‘Below the waist’ was beyond her.  Writing about it now makes me smile.  The ‘holding hands’ comment seems so quaint.  Can you imagine saying that to a kid today, with everything they see on TV and in the movies?  Still, she brought up the subject, which was amazing in and of itself, and she did make me feel that my longings were still normal.  Charlie Jacknow – amazing, but I still remember his name and can picture exactly what he looked like – and I had been kissing at parties for awhile by then, and I had sat on his lap a few times.  I remember wondering why he felt so ‘lumpy.’  I don’t remember when I learned about erections, or how, which seems kind of strange to me now.  Until I had daughters myself, and watched their early sex play, I had thought I must have been oversexed.  I learned that my mom was right: I was normal.  One last story in that regard.  When I was in kindergarten, my friend Billie Gardner and I would wrap sheets or towels around our heads and chase each other around the yard. I still remember his name too.  I would often catch him, pull him to the ground and tumble on top of him.  It felt fabulous.  When my older daughter was in the second or third grade, I watched her play the very same game with a little boy from her school.  What made either of them think of wrapping towels around their heads, I have no idea.  But watching them was a great relief.  The image of them in our yard still makes me smile.  She is the daughter who got married a few weeks ago.  I wonder if she even remembers the game, or has told her husband about it.  If she remembers, give that she is her mother’s daughter, I’m sure she has.