Giving your Teenagers the 'Sex Talk': why I'd rather be a Wombat

I wish I was a Wombat.

Yes, I’m at one of those stages in life where the existence of a nocturnal burrow creature seems to be a somewhat attractive alternative to my current situation. You see, I’m the father of two teenagers: a boy and a girl…

…and it’s time for THE TALK.

And you know what’s cruel about THE TALK, don’t you? It’s the fact that when I was a kid about to receive THE TALK it was in an era when the last thing kids wanted to hear was their father giving them THE TALK. I mean, as a guy you knew he was going to mumble some incoherent statement about Papua New Guinean natives (whoever they were), show you a 17 year old Playboy magazine that had all the critical pages taken out of it (the affluent kids were lucky enough to be given a National Geographic), and then hand you a five dollar note to go to the pharmacy and buy yourself some breath mints and something else you’d never heard of before and couldn’t remember the name of by the time you got there. So all you kept thinking was; “how are breath mints going to help?”

But now that it’s my turn the whole thing has flipped around so that it’s actually the parent who doesn’t want to face THE TALK. I mean, parents just know that their kids know more about THE TALK than they do and that their kids are just waiting to ask them a whole bunch of questions that the kids already know the answers to, but know that their parents don’t.

So it’s all going to be a disaster. I mean, the kids today have this whole new language around the subject of THE TALK and we parents only know two things in total about it. But we have to approach it like we’re experts and our kids are the novices while knowing that the whole time we’re engaging in THE TALK, our kids are laughing behind our backs.

Little Weasels!

And you know what makes it worse? You have to try and make it sound all positive. Like when you talk to your daughter you have to talk about how wonderful it all is. Sure she gets cramp one week out of four, sure her hormones are all going crazy, sure her body is changing all over the place… but it’s all for the best because guess what? Now she can have babies and that's wonderful…

…but not right now or I’ll kill you!!!!!

Of course it’s a different conversation with your boy. Sure his girlfriend gets grumpy for one week out of four, sure she seems perpetually moody (almost Bi-polar) much of the time, sure she is growing breasts and hips and eyelashes… but it’s all for the best because guess what? Now she can have babies and that's wonderful…

…and you go for it lad, become a man, make the Old man proud!

Then you realise that your daughter’s boyfriend’s father is out there having the same conversation with his boy.

 

God damn it, I’ll kill the little bugger!

So now it’s time to panic. And finally, after 25 years of trying, you suddenly remember what it was that your father sent you off to the pharmacy to buy… condoms.

So out they come – you’ve still got 19 in the box of 20 because you only bought them three months ago. Anyway, you take two out of the box and you and your boy go about that awkward and silent exercise of putting them on cucumbers. Yes, it’s a silent exercise; there’s no actual discussion or explanation as to why you’re putting these things on cucumbers – you just hope that your boy has enough nous to realise that this has nothing to do with making a salad. More importantly, you hope that that other boy, the one who is going out with your daughter and is currently having the same conversation with his father, understands why he has to put this thing on a cucumber.

Or perhaps in his case… you’re hoping they’re using baby carrots…

… Or maybe you just don’t want to think about it at all…

But you have to! She’s your little girl! And he’s only after one thing! It’s the same thing your boy is after – and that’s the same thing that you were after when your father was giving you THE TALK 25 years ago.

Yes, I'm definitely going to kill the little bugger!!!

 

Oh, the burden of being a responsible parent.

Sometimes I think that life would be so much easier if I was a Wombat.

That’s what I think… and usually I’m right.