Sex MISeducation

            Bearded clam. Papaya. Muffin. Cooter. Beaver. Punani. Pork sword. Schlong. Weiner. One-eyed Monster. Bologna Pony.

            Don't deny it; you just laughed. Out loud. Don't worry--these slang terms make me giggle too.  You may have even blushed a little bit. I know I did.

            But I can almost guarantee with as much accuracy as a pregnancy test that you did not bust out into a fit of uncontrollable laughter like I did in sex education in grade school. Or like I just did while writing these slang terms.

            When I first found out we would be having sex education in fifth grade, my first thought was, aren't we too young? And then I looked around the classroom and I saw a couple boys grabbing themselves and a few female classmates of mine had already sprouted decent sized tits.

            Then I looked down at my own chest and realized it was still as flat as my back and to make matters worse, I had no hair "down there". Everyone else was starting to go through puberty and I was in last place. Apparently I was too young for sex ed, but several of my classmates were not. I'm twenty-nine years old now and I don't even think I've made it all the way through puberty yet. I'm about 75% of the way there...still waiting on the tatas to stop training already and grow!

            After the afternoon recess one day, we were herded like baby calves downstairs to the gym where we sat cross-legged on the gym floor, waiting for our teacher to teach us about puberty and intercourse, two of my all-time favorite topics.

            The girls were put on one side of the gym while the boys were put on the other. Apparently they did this so the boys and girls could learn about themselves separately and then they would join the two sexes to incorporate what we've all learned.

            Before the class even started, I was stifling my laughter. I couldn't help it! There were visual aids—posters of male and female anatomy, plus for us young lasses, boxes of pads and tampons on a table.  There was even a bowl of water on the table, most likely to be used to demonstrate how pads and tampons absorb just like the commercials, except this water wasn't blue.

            I was clearly not mature enough to handle sex ed at the age of nine, but I was going to give it a whirl anyway. If I was going to sprout pubes and grow tits overnight, I at least wanted to be prepared.

            "This might make some of you uncomfortable at first, but I would appreciate it if you would all listen and wait until after I'm done to ask questions or make comments," the teacher instructed us. As if I could adhere to these rules! I was already armed at least thirty jokes that involved penises and vaginas that I was ready to fire away to my friends sitting nearby.

            "I will tolerate no jokes or laughing. I expect all of you to take this seriously. No teasing your classmates either," the teacher added. Man, I thought to myself, this bitch was really ruining my fun for the day.  The teacher discussed how our bodies would change in the next coming years—but all I heard was "menstruation, boobs, tampons". It was difficult for me to listen because it was like learning a foreign language. I hadn't experienced any of these things like some of the other girls did.

            When it was finally time to merge the boys and girls together after our segregation in the gym, I was already starting to sweat and I'm pretty sure the dorkiest kid in class had a huge boner as the teacher started using the visual aids of a woman's anatomy.  Somehow I managed to keep my cool as she continuously used the words "penis" and "vagina". Even as an adult, these words still make me laugh so looking back, I was impressed I had made it more than five minutes into the lecture.

            That all changed when the topic shifted from puberty to intercourse and she was explaining sex—or for a child like me, I interpreted intercourse as "boy meets girl. Boy gets boner. Girl laughs at boy for getting boner"—at least that's what I would do. But really all I heard the teacher say was the word "erection", and as part of my selective listening disorder (that I still have by the way) I chose to hear the word "boner" instead. I swear Helen Keller was better at listening than I have ever been.

            Boner, I whispered quietly. Once the word was past my lips, I lost it. I completely missed the teacher's explanation about erections because my childlike cackling cut through the air like a knife. My face turned bright red and try as I might, I couldn't hold it in. I knew I looked like a complete idiot, but I couldn’t stop laughing.

            My shoulders were bouncing up and down and my abs were starting to ache. I was laughing so hard I was starting to grow a 6-pack.  The teacher warned me that if I couldn't stop laughing, I would have to wait out in the hall until I could stop laughing.

            Since I didn't want to be the idiot who got kicked out of sex ed, I thought of things that were not funny. Poor kids in Africa with flies on their faces. Soap operas. Homelessness. My brother.

            It worked. I managed to calm down and my face was restored from a deep crimson to its original color. I looked around the room and saw a couple boys snickering every time the teacher said the word "erection" or "intercourse", so I knew I wasn't alone.

            Then came question and answer time. The teacher asked all of us if we had any questions. At first, everyone was as silent and still as if we were in a Catholic church, but one boy finally raised his hand.

            "What is an erec...um, an erection?" the boy asked, obviously confused. He must have been listening as much as I was. Oddly enough, he was the same kid who I suspected had a boner when the teacher was showing us the parts of a vagina. So here he is with an erection without knowing he had one? What...a loser.

            Turns out he wasn't the loser; I was, and I made sure everyone knew how much of an ass I really was. As soon as he asked the question, I could feel the slow and steady rise of hysterics boiling inside me, ready to explode and I held my mouth as closed as I could before I lost it. This time, my laughter was really uncontrollable. I put both my hands across my mouth, hoping I could push it back in but the laughter escaped out the sides.  I even laughed so hard I heard a fart squeak out, which only made me guffaw louder.

            To an onlooker, it looked as if I was choking while having a grand mal seizure on the floor of the gymnasium. My body was writhing across the floor like a boa constrictor and my laughter wasn't even audible anymore. My mouth was just wide open and my entire body was gyrating from guffawing.  The only sound that could be heard coming from my throat was a series of clicking noises that sounded eerily similar to the mating calls of dolphins.

            I was immediately kicked out. I had been warned once, but I wouldn't be warned twice. I was finally sent out to the hallway where I had to sit for the remainder of the class.

            I was the only person who got kicked out of sex education in the fifth grade in my school. After school, some of my friends were envious of me not having to sit through an uncomfortable lecture about puberty and sex in front of their peers.

            But I was pissed. Not at myself for not being able to control my laughter, but at my teacher for not letting me have another chance. And the fact that I would now be misinformed if I suddenly sprouted boobs and pubes and got a visit from the rusty beaver overnight! I wanted to learn what everyone else was in case I became a woman the very next day! I would be so unprepared.

            The only thing I could do was to go home and ask my mother for the information, but then that meant I would have to tell her I got kicked out of sex ed, and I wasn't ready for that.

            I had no choice but to rely on my friends for information. As it turns out, my friends were complete morons, but I didn't know it at the time. I believed everything they told me; why wouldn't I? I couldn't disprove them since I wasn't in the class, so I took them seriously.

            According to my friends, this is what I missed:

            1. The wiener goes in a girl's pee hole (she didn't know the difference             between the urethra and the vaginal opening)

            2. When a boy gets a boner, he puts it in the vagina (pee hole according to             her) and pees inside her and then she gets pregnant

            3. Pads are diapers (I have to admit; this one is basically true)

            4. Tampons will make you lose your virginity

            5. Every 28 days, women PMS (when I asked them to elaborate on what             the acronym meant, they stared blankly at me)

            6. The bumps on my nipples are Braille for "Lick Me"

            7. Every woman has an Aunt Flo (how could I not know her?)

            Imagine my surprise the first time I got my period. Or the first time I had sex.

            Joking. I'm not that retarded. Luckily for me, I learned everything I needed to know in junior high...both inside and outside of the health education classroom. I just hope my idiotic friends eventually caught on and realized how wrong they actually were, otherwise they were all wearing diapers, getting peed on, and having blind people molest their nipples.

            Needless to say, I never got kicked out of another class in my entire educational history. I, in fact, found out I do not have an Aunt Flo, after hours of yelling at my parents for keeping a family member from me.  My nipples are not like elevator button pads; they do not have Braille written on them.  This girl never wears diapers, only 'pons and oddly enough, I never get PMS.  To this day, I find the word "wiener" to be one of the top 5 funniest words...EVER.  The other words are queef, toot, butthole, and poop.