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thedrifter
02-05-06, 06:40 AM
Birds, bees and the ABCs
By Steve Damish, Enterprise Managing Editor

Sex education?

My father taught me everything he knew when I was 10. I remember it seemed a rather short lesson from a guy who had been in the Marines and had six kids.

He did it in a sneak attack on me and my two older brothers, when he turned a fishing trip on Sebago Lake, Maine, into a sex seminar.

He had no choice but to trick us, because the previous times he tried to enlighten us on the ways of the birds and the bees (those lucky critters!) we either A. Pretended to be sick B. Cried out: "Mom, Dad's trying to talk to us about sex again!" C. Ran into the woods or D. All of the above.

So he waited. And he plotted.

Then, during our annual August vacation in Maine, he suggested an afternoon of fishing for the mighty landlocked salmon — little did we know it would, instead, be a meek explanation of how the little Damishes came to be.

We heard about why God put certain things here on a man and there on a woman and why it's okay to do certain things with those certain things when you're married but not okay to do them if you're not married and especially if you're by yourself.

My father had little to say — this, despite his years in the military and his ability to produce kids (which I realized that day you can do without knowing much about sex).

He talked slowly, and did his best to illustrate his message — with his hands!

For example, when he mentioned venereal disease, he told us one of them is called "The Clap."

Then he would clap his hands once, then twice, then a third time, pausing between each to impart his words of wisdom:

"You see what I mean" — CLAP! — "It's called The Clap" — CLAP! — "Just like this is called a clap" — CLAP! — "But this clap is much different than that clap."

My two older brothers cursed and swore (apparently they had missed my father's lesson on using proper language). Then, they threatened to jump out — but my father was, at this juncture, still bigger than both so they sat down and shut up.

I fished throughout the talk, but had no luck — no doubt my father's clap-clap-clapping had scattered any nearby salmon.

We puttered in a half-hour later, my father's mission accomplished.

But (sorry, Dad) we hadn't learned anything new — except to never get in a boat with him again.

Anyway, I hadn't thought about this joyous time in my life until last week, when I read about the proposal to add a health class to the state's core curriculum requirements.

Such a class would include a segment on sex, so the debate is raging again over this issue on Beacon Hill. The main question: Should teachers be the ones who tell our kids about sex, homosexuality and all that stuff that makes the average legislator think, "Why didn't I just stick to practicing law?"

Shouldn't it be left to parents to explain the ways of this world, like it traditionally has been?

That's what opponents of the bill are saying, and so far they are dominating the discourse (note clever use of word that rhymes with a word that means sex.)

They'll probably win in the end, and sex education will remain something done at home — or if you're as lucky as me, in a boat.

But I don't know — seems to me it might be a good idea, especially since what we've been doing hasn't reduced the number of pregnancies or sexually transmitted diseases among teens.

Parents, after all, have been allowed all this time to teach our kids, and we've done a lousy job. Perhaps we figure our kids have already learned everything from Christina Aquilera, magazines and the Internet.

Perhaps we just aren't up to the challenge — face it, it's a tricky thing to teach, especially when most of us still consider ourselves students.

Or perhaps it's because my generation learned from people like my father. Great guy, my dad — one of a kind. But a teacher of sex education? No way.

Please, clap if you agree. Don't worry, you won't get a venereal disease doing that.

At least I don't think so.