Thanks to a play date ten years ago at which Barbie and Ken got nekkid and busy, I was put into a situation where I had no choice but to tell then five year old Zoe about the facts of life.
And while I wish I was talking about the seventies sitcom and that Zoe and I curled up on the couch and ate popcorn and gabbed on and on about the Eastland School for Girls with Mrs. Garrett and Jo and Blair and Natalie and Tootie and how Mommy just knew there was something special about George Burnett (well helloooooooooooo, Mr. Clooney! I love you! Call me!) … I’m not. I’m talking about sitting at the kitchen table and talking about all things birds and bees. Add in the kit and kaboodle and it was the whole shebang.
Kaboodle? Shebang?
Who’s in charge of inventing words? I’d like to put in a request for shuwumple.
Shuwumple. My shuwumple broke and I need a new one.
It’s open to interpretation.
Anyway, ten years ago, five year old Zoe had her five year old playmate Maddie over. I didn’t like Maddie. I found her to have reached an inordinate level of oddness and weirdness in her short life, constantly bragging about her doctor mother and her stay-at-home father and her devil spawn younger brother who insisted on head butting me in my knees every time he saw me.
They were a strange family who lived up the street from us. But we were new in the area and Zoe was happy to have made a friend so I bit my tongue until it bled.
The girls were busy giggling and laughing and running around up in Zoe’s room for several minutes until they weren’t. And as any mom will tell you, NOTHING good comes out of complete and utter silence behind a closed door with two six year olds on the other side.
So I knocked on the door and immediately entered Zoe’s bedroom without giving them a chance to scatter and hide the evidence. And sure enough, there was Maddie, busy contorting a naked Ken and Barbie into the missionary position. And there was Zoe, with her face all crinkled up like it was that one time she watched me change my friend’s baby’s diaper, five seconds before she screamed EWWWWWWWWWW and ran out of the room.
I took this as a positive sign.
They both looked up at me and Maddie turned scarlet red and looked away. Zoe looked right at me and shouted IS LUNCH READY NOW?
I wasn’t quite sure how to respond. Sure, but make Ken promise Barbie it will be better next time? No, get in the car – I need to drive it around the world at the speed of light so I can turn back time and save us both a boatload of therapy twenty years from now?
I decided not to make a big deal about it. I simply told them that Intro to Fornication 101 was over and to come down to the kitchen for some mac’n cheese. Afterwards, I sent them outside to play but not before taking the eyes out from in back of my head and cementing one onto each of their foreheads.
Later, after Maddie had gone, I sat down Zoe in the kitchen and asked her what Barbie and Ken were doing. And I held my breath and hoped she would tell me they were playing naked Twister and then we’d laugh and I’d tell her that it was against the law to play naked games before you were forty and then we’d have a cookie and I’d tell her to go clean her room and she’d cry YOU’RE SUCH A MEANIE and all would be right with the world.
And then she told me they were having sex.
And I silently cursed my empty pantry and fridge which forced a trip to Wegmans which resulted in bumping into Maddie and her mom which precipitated the play date.
Stupid human digestive systems and their incessant need to eat. For God’s sake, who’s bright idea was it to invent them anyway?
So I asked Zoe if she knew what sex was? And I held my breath and hoped she’d tell me something simple, like sex is what daddy hopes for when he cleans the bathroom. Then we’d laugh and I’d give her a kiss and a cookie and tell her to go clean her room and she’d cry YOU’RE SUCH A MEANIE and all would be right with the world.
And then she told me that Maddie said boys have sperm and girls have eggs and boys put their wee wees into girl’s vaginas and the eggs grow into babies.
And I silently cursed Maddie’s doctor mother and her incessant need to procreate and then discuss it with her offspring. And what’s up with using “wee wee” if you’re going to use vagina? Men get a euphemism and woman get stuck with reality?
What else is new?
And then I told Zoe that I really enjoyed our talk and if we stopped talking right that instant, we could jump on a flight to Disney World and see the Little Mermaid and wouldn’t that just be so much more fun than talking about boring old wee wees and vaginas?
And then she asked me why girls don’t just lay their eggs like chickens?
So instead of playing dress up and building forts out of blankets and making Ooblek with my five year old daughter like all the rest of humanity who were lucky enough not to live down the road from trolls, I wound up having a sex talk with her instead.
I tried to keep it as age appropriate as possible, avoiding the nitty gritty details and emphasizing the concept that sex was an expression of love between a mommy and a daddy and essentially a means to an end, like if you wanted a baby or if you wanted the living room re-painted by the weekend.
When we were done, Zoe was thoroughly grossed out by all the mushy gushy talk about love and asked if we could be done so that she could play with her Betty Spaghetti upstairs.
And I said yes and silently vowed that the next place Maddie and Zoe would play would be that patch of grass over my dead body and then I held my breath and hoped that the entire conversation had either gone over her head or rerouted through one ear and out the other much like the 62 conversations we had the day before about cleaning her room.
And then she raced up the stairs yelling NATE! NATE! CAN YOU HAVE SEX WITH MOMMY RIGHT NOW AND TURN HER EGG INTO A BABY SISTER?
.
.
34 thoughts on “Why couldn’t Barbie have just given Ken a lap dance and walked away like a good girl?”
OMG, did she really say that??? *LOL*
We’ve got anatomy covered, but somehow the actual mechanics of the double-backed beast have not come into question yet. For which I am grateful, as I’m still trying to cure the pelvis wiggle that’s supposed to be wringing the last drops out of the wee wee but instead flings the last drops around. Why do men think they have to stand up to go, anyway?
you make me laugh so much.. we are thankfully only at the penis and bagina stage here still, it took a lot to convince them that someone hadn’t cut my penis of, Riley tried to look every chance he got and see if I was hiding it somewhere and I decided when he was 3 1/2 I would never be naked in front of him again
Okay, first things first, who *are* these people that are hopping on your blog in the wee, small hours in order to beat me to my True and Rightful position as Commenter the First? Eh? Grrrrr! That’s just a load of shuwumple!
Secondly, I thank my lucky stars that Kiddo, by grace of being an only child whose busily procreating aunts and uncles all live at least 5 to 6 hours away (seriously, someone’s been homecooking up a new niece or nephew for me at the rate of at least one a year since Kiddo was born) so the furthest we’ve gotten in the “Mommy, where do babies come from and how *exactly* do they get made?” line of conversation is that babies grow in women’s tummies (shoot me, I didn’t get into the specifics of female interior plumbing. Heck, we still use the general and bland term “privates” for all her lady business as well. I might as well go back to the quaint “tinkle” and “B.M.” that my mother insisted upon using in our home as children, then tie on my bonnet and take the wagon for a ride. Because seriously, getting more specific on this topic positively would give me the vapors!), and that some women can’t grow a baby in their tummy (*raising hand*) and so some families are created by adoption (*raising both hands*) and then we get neatly sidetracked away from The Facts of Life (call me, George, I loved you even with that horrendous mullet!) and I can breathe a sigh of relief.
Though Kiddo does think it is rather wrong that only women can grow babies. Of course, she speaks a universal truth (and the Pregnant Man? TOTALLY doesn’t count.) though she speaks it from the “poor men, they must be sad they can’t go through pregnancy” angle, which, HA bloody HA.
Now, please arrange your comments section so that none of these shuwumple-waving night owls ever beat me to Commenter the First again, mmmkay? *mwah* Thanks!
I don’t think I’ve had this kind of conversation with either of my boys, yet. But then, they don’t play with any co-ed action figures, so viva la differance isn’t in their face every day.
Can I just say that there are worse ways to learn? Like this one time when I was … oh … 8 or 9 and my cousin had walked in on his parents and he was too embarrassed to explain it with words so we – fully clothed, mind you – did a quick 5 second re-enactment?!?
Extra Ew.
I think that after that I said something brilliant like, “That was horrible, why would anyone do that?”
Ugh. Flashbacks.
you have a way w/words that just put me on the floor even w/serious stuff like this, that reading between the lines had to take you to a level you really don’t wanna be at. why do some feel the need to blab about things only parents should be doing in their own time and space.
okay..my kids know the difference between the girls and boys. They don’t know what it is used for.
OMG!! A parent actually gave in detail what they are used for..so gross I know we all have to have the “SEX” or “birds and the bees” talk but isn’t that suppose to wait until they turn the correct age like 10-15?
but the fact that zoe told nate you guys could have a kid that is so funny!
p.s. I will be having adventures in bra shopping today..you might get a kick out of what i found.
Oh. My. God. That had to be utterly miserable. I’m still cringing.
And Maddie is probably knocked up somewhere right about now.
Oh my goodness!!! That is a RIOT. Sorry though 😉
Oh my word how funny was that story. I loved it. Glad I don’t have to worry about that stuff anymore. Children all gone out of the house!!!
But, I do remember when my mom handed me “The Book” that tells all. uuuummmm No it didn’t!!!
At least you didn’t hand her a red cross pamphlet and say if you have any questions….. Ill go find an encyclopedia. Like my mom did 🙂
Hi Andrea! How are you? You crack me up!! SO glad to see your new looks! LOVE it!
Can you talk to Emmy for me?
Thanks,
Miss you and love ya, Jen
Great story and great writing. I have a 2 year old boy and I know this situation looms silenty ahead for us.
Don’t you wish you could’ve been inside her head, just so you could know how she was processing that info? Might’ve given you a bit of warning before that last statement of hers popped out — which is the one that sent me to the floor laughing, btw.
Ok… here I sit in the office, at my desk, horking out my bits of food, as i gasp out a ridiculous guffaw. Hysterical
So when you ask her now…what are her memories of that day? Or now that she is a teenager does she refuse to communicate with her embarrassing mum? (you? embarrassing?……never!)
BTW – the San Francisco red hair/irish incident – hilarious – so glad you were thinking of me!!!
Did Maddie add in, “It’s a good thing Barbie is on the pill, since Ken forgot his condoms today.”
Yes, women get stuck with reality. Figures.
omg…flashback is right!! LOL!! This SAME incident happened to ME when I was a kid!! I was a little older than Zoe was when it happened but still…I remember it well to this day!
We had a new neighbor move in, a girl just a year or so older than me and she was worldly, went to a Catholic school and everything. To explain we lived out in the boonies, in a area full of Baptist churches, not a Catholic in sight and not a girl my age in sight either! LOL! I was a tomboy who played with the boys from down the road 🙂 Anyway her name was Tracy and again like your story my mom didn’t care much for her or her parents, I knew this and that’s why she was at our house. Guess mom figured it was better for her to come over rather than me go over! WRONG!
Anyway we played Barbies and before I knew it they were nekked Barbies doin’ the position all over the floor of my room!! ewwwww…. Sooo in comes my Mom. We weren’t obvious about hiding the Barbies, just picked them up and hurled them behind us right in front of my horror stricken mother! LOL!! Tracy then went home. Mom then had “the talk” with me which consisted of her telling me that was NOT a nice thing to do and me telling her it was Tracy’s idea! LOL! Tracy also taught me my first cuss words…unfortunately she didn’t teach me NOT to say them…learned that one the hard way 🙁
I vividly remember how poor a job my mom did of explaining the birds and bees to me. I had no idea what she was talking about. I’m not sure she did either, after only two kids [!!].
When I explained to my son the birds & bees [I am single, so there was no choice] I wanted to make sure he knew what was what, so I sketched pictures. Then he laughed at how bad an artist I am. It was traumatic – for me…
You just gave me an idea for a blog. Thanks!
Dee
Oh ya it gets better as they get older. You will have no where to run, no where to hide. You will have been open and hip and relaxed in you discussion about S E X and think Yes I am the super parent.
Then at the dinner table your son which whom you have shared this knowledge of this beautiful act of love will ask you “Mom, I know why there are condoms but why are there flavored condoms?” When the rice has stopped coming out of your nose and you have stopped cursing your husband for being at work you will come up with yet another brilliant explanation of the acts of love and then you will mix yourself a stiff drink and cry to yourself in your bathroom.
Yes it only gets better.
You always make my day with your awesome humor!! I have an award on my blog for you! 🙂
Yikes!! Curses on Maddie and her doctor-mother! This is too hilarious!
How is it that even a dreaded topic like this sounds funny when written by you??!! I especially loved the part about sex is a means to an end, kinda like when you want the room re-painted…OMG, that was classic!! I just love the way you tell stories!!
Oh and BTW, when it comes time for the sex talk with my kids, I’ll be getting in touch with you!
OMG! My youngest accidentally walked in on my husband and I the other day- we told her we were getting dressed in bed. Not ready to explain all that yet to her! lol
Stopping by from SITS… you commented somewhere above me! I’m now your newest stalker… err follower! This is one of the funniest posts I’ve read in a long time! I can’t wait to stalk you more, I mean, read more of your posts!
OMG I can’t stop laughing! You have a fantastic way of taking a life moment and making it hysterical. And the title? I still am laughing.
That Barbie. I always knew she was a slut.
Nooooooooo. I think I will just not allow play dates. Yeah, that’s it. I like your new header for July. I don’t like thinking about having the sex conversation with my kids. I think being pregnant is just going to bring it all on. Better me than the playmate you can’t stand, I guess.
You are hilarious. The title alone had me cracking up.
One of my five favorite blog posts of the week! Listed on Fab Five Friday http://myhouseholdjunk.com
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