-- And since I told my friend Jessica (AKA Erindae) about this story, and she seemed to find it absolutely hilarious, I have decided to share it with the world.
This is a blog post about womanly issues. Periods and vaginas are going to be referenced. If you are disturbed by this, I don't think that you should read any further.
If you're still reading, thanks. I hope you get a good laugh out of this.
I went to Catholic school all my life, including Catholic grade school. Now, at my particular grade school, sex education started at around sixth grade and continued on through seventh and eighth grade as well. Now, take every assumption you have about sex ed and throw it out the window.
At my grade school, sex education involved nothing pertaining to inserting Tab A into Slot B. Sex education didn't even bother to explain to me where a baby exits the body from. Sex education didn't even tell me that my sexual organs were linked to where I peed from.
Sex education should have been titled 'Abstinence Training.' And you know what? That's fine. Children don't need to be having sex. They shouldn't be encouraged to do it. But they SHOULD be taught how it all works.
Because when I got my first period, I didn't know what was happening.
I went to the bathroom at home one night and was terrified to find blood. I thought I was dying. I'm not even kidding. I thought that I was bleeding internally from some kind of horrible mystery wound and that it wouldn't stop, and that I was probably going to die of blood loss in my sleep.
And so, I ran, crying and sobbing pathetically, to my mother, who proceeded to tell me that I was finally growing up and there was nothing wrong with me.
So the terror was averted, but still. That was a scary experience. Had sex education been taught to us properly-- had abstinence training been paired with the science involving male and female reproductive organs-- that whole ordeal could have been averted. I would have been like "Oh cool. I got my first period. Bitchin'. Hey Mom, please buy extra feminine care products next time you go shopping."
So yeah, then I went to high school. And health class was taught by a gym coach who was obligated to teach a course but clearly didn't give a shit about teaching.
Suffice to say, I didn't learn anything from him, either.
Well, except for the fact that once again, there was the very Catholic spin on the class where we were routinely told that we shouldn't have sex before we were married. I was totally on board with that. That was old news to me. I accepted that as part of my life and was at peace with it.
But, I thought. But. What if I got married and I still didn't know how to have sex? What if my potential husband received the same sort of education as I did and he didn't have a damn clue where he was supposed to put his penis and the two of us just kind of went to bed and laid there together and hoped that somehow that would count?
...I never said I understood how things like instinct and so on and so forth work. I was fifteen and terrified for my future. My mother wanted grandchildren and my older sister wasn't going to have them. The deed fell on me. I HAD to have sex if I ever got married.
It wasn't until my senior year of high school that I took Anatomy and Physiology, and finally learned that to make a baby, you have to put a penis in a vagina. I was seventeen before I finally knew anything beyond the fact that sex is for married couples and that part of being a woman means bleeding from where I peed once a month. Or sometimes more or less than that, because mine were really random.
So yeah. I don't know if Catholic schools are still teaching students in this manner, but if they are, they need to rethink that.
And that was the post about sex.
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