Sunday Funnies

When our daughter Katy got married, her husband Travis already had a daughter from a previous marriage. Grams was delighted with the idea of a ready-made granddaughter. But his daughter lives in the Chicago area so visits are few and far between.

In fact, we first met her just a few days before the wedding. They arrived in Corpus Christi late in the afternoon. We had been busy all day with wedding details and were all tired. There was no dinner cooked, so we decided to visit our neighborhood Whataburger for a quick dinner.

Each of us stepped up to the counter and placed our order. Travis and Mady stepped up to the counter and he asked her whether she wanted a hamburger or chicken strips. She looked up at him with her innocent 7-year-old eyes and said "I'm a vegetarian!"

He didn't miss a beat. He turned to the young lady behind the counter and asked if they had broccoli, asparagus and other vegetables. The cashier looked a little perplexed and didn't respond at all. Mady quickly said "I don't eat that."

So Travis continued, "You said you're a vegetarian. If you don't eat vegetables, what do you eat?"

Undaunted, Mady replied "COOKIES!"

Travis turned to the young cashier and ordered a Justaburger.

A year later, we saw her again. Katy and Travis were busy so Mady and I were spending a day together. We went shopping. We were at Marshalls and there were a few things she wanted to try on. I told her to come out and show them to me, that I would wait by the entrance to the dressing room. The sales clerk who was checking people into the dressing room asked "Are you shopping with your grandmother?" As she held up her hand between us, she replied, "She's not my grandmother. She's nothing to me." I will admit, I felt a little stung by those words. But I told her that it was true I wasn't actually her grandmother and we could just be good friends.

Mady & Grams dancing at her 13th birthday party.

It's been quite a few years since those first awkward meetings. She's grown into quite a lovely and talented young lady and we've grown to love each other. She calls me Grams now just like Our Little Princess. But we still don't see her very often. Chicago is a long way from South Texas.

The Sunday Funnies

Last week Grams told you about having the "sex talk" with our daughter when she was in third grade. I think I may was well go ahead and tell you about a similar conversation with our son Nick.

When Nick was in the fourth or fifth grade our local parish church offered a class in christian sexuality. There were separate classes for boys and girls. Children had to have special permission slips signed to attend. They covered the basics of the reproductive system and, obviously, taught abstention. We signed Nick up for the classes thinking it would open the door for discussion and we wouldn't have to cover the basics ourselves.

Anyone who knows Grandad knows that it would have been virtually impossible for him to talk to our son about the changes that were taking place in his body. He's just not comfortable with that kind of conversation. And I definitely didn't feel qualified to tell him about about male arousal and his body. I thought this method would work extremely well and it would provide the opportunity to answer his questions and discuss sex without embarrassment. And it did. I was very pleased to learn that a good portion of the lessons the boys took concentrated on respecting girls and not pressuring them for sex.

Now, fast forward to his senior year in high school when he had his first serious girlfriend. After they'd been going out a while I started to suspect that perhaps they were having sex. I thought it was time to raise the subject again. I know that no matter what you teach your kids about abstaining from sex, you also better teach them how to handle it once they become sexually active. Basically, I wanted to make sure that, if he was having sex, he was using protection and being as safe as possible. So, one night I waited up for him to come home.

Nick and I are both night owls. Grandad goes to bed early. We were in the habit of sitting and talking when he came home from a date. So he was not surprised that I was still up when he came home.

Now, you should know that I'm a very direct person. I don't beat around the bush. When I have something to say, I just say it.  So I did. I just asked him straight out, "Nick, are you sexually active?"

He got this odd look on his face and said, "You mean with other people?"

I completely lost my composure. It was all I could do not to laugh out loud. Seriously, I had to get up and go into the other room. It was a good ten minutes before I could go back into the living room, finish the conversation, and make my point that if they were having sex, he needed to be taking appropriate precautions.

And that was that. It was quite a while before I had another conversation about sex with him. Heck, it was quite a while before I could look at him without wanting to bust out laughing.

The Sunday Funnies

When Grams was a child, one of my favorite things was to climb up on my Dad's lap every Sunday morning. Daddy would drink his coffee and read the Sunday funnies to me. Sometimes, if I woke up early, I would climb into bed between my parents and he would read them to me there. It's one of the gentlest memories I have of my Dad. We loved Dennis the Menace, Little Orphan Annie, Alley Oop, Brenda Starr, Beetle Bailey, Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, Dick Tracy, and Superman. I think sitting with my dad while he read these comic strips aloud to me is one of the reasons I still love to read today.

In honor of my Dad and our love of the Sunday Funny Papers, I'm starting a new feature today that, as you can see, I'm calling "The Sunday Funnies." This will be an occasional feature of something funny, cute or humorous. Fair warning, my sense of humor is sometimes a little off. Many of these stories will be about things that happened when we were raising kids. Such is the case today.

Grams is a child of the 50s and 60s. It was a more naive and innocent time. I grew up in a strict and staunch southern baptist household. Discussion of and/or questions about anything remotely sexual were forbidden. While I knew, anecdotally at least, that other parents had "the birds and the bees" talks with their kids, we never had that conversation at our house. These topics were just not discussed in polite company.

In our house, sex education consisted of our mother telling us repeatedly that boys only wanted one thing and we were not to give it to them. The only actual conversation about sex that ever took place occurred when I was 20-years-old. I asked my mom if it hurt the first time you have sex. I remember her response verbatim. She said, "It's a little uncomfortable." That's it! That was the entirety of sex education I received at home.

In the 1960s, schools also did very little sex education. When I was in sixth grade, all the girls were kept after school one day and required to watch a movie about menstruation and the female reproductive system. There was no mention of sex or male anatomy or arousal or reproduction. It could not have been construed in any way as sex education. At 20 years old, I had very little knowledge of anything sexual.

A few years later, as a young mother, I was determined that this would not be the case with my children. I was going to teach them well. They would not go out into the world without knowing everything they needed to know. I read books and did research to prepare myself. I knew the day would come. Now, to wait for the right time.

Our daughter was in about the third grade when the mother of one of her best friends became pregnant. As the time for her delivery approached, Katy naturally became more curious. One day she came into my bedroom and asked "Mommy, how did that baby get inside Debbie's tummy?"

Here it was! The moment had arrived! I was ready! I was informed! I was primed! It was time for me to share my knowledge with my little girl! I was terrified! But I was calm and well-prepared.

Breathlessly, I sat down next to her on the foot of my bed and had "the talk." I explained in simple language that she could understand what happens when a baby is made. Her eyes got bigger and bigger. I really thought she was getting it. I was so proud of myself.

Then it happened. She looked at me with those big brown eyes and said three words I will never forget. "Mom, that's disgusting!"

I looked back at her and said, "Katy, hold that thought for the next twenty years."

What Grams learned that day was very valuable in the remainder of my child-rearing years. I will share that lesson with you now. When your kids ask you a question, answer it and then shut the hell up. They're not looking for explanations, they just want an answer. So, just answer the question they ask. It will turn out better for everyone involved if you don't elaborate.