In high school, we had to take PE once a week, and ballet once a week, but I'm not even going to pretend like my high school experience was normal. We could also go get Communion before a particularly hard test, if we wanted.

We had 5 semesters of PE required, I think, and one of those was split with driver's ed. There were no different types of PE classes to be taken, though.

And I discovered the wisdom of taking archery every quarter with the PE teacher who was notorious for getting high with students out back of the gym.

::highfives amych::

Ugh. Normally the parental sex talk conversation doesn't faze me at all. Seriously, not at all. But today, it seems to be touching a tender spot.

I even went for an hour and a half walk with the little guy to pull myself out of it, to no avail.

PLEASE skip over the next bit if you are at all sensitive.

I'll whitefont just in case. Here are the only three sentences my father ever uttered to me about sex. "If you try to stop me again, I will kill you." "Yes, it is supposed to hurt." And the capper, "You wanted it that way.'

At the apex of the ironies available in the human condition, he refused to sign every single sex-ed permission slip ever produced in my academic career. So. Not only did I have to suffer the brutality and humiliations at home, but I also got to be that weird kid who had to leave perfectly normal science classes to go sit in the nurse's office.

Sometimes, I look in the mirror and just have to shake my head in disbelief.

{{{bonny}}}

but I do remember this hilarious curriculum about drugs in health class in 7th grade, where they taught us all the "street" names for drugs: blow, smack, etc. So that we could better communicate with our future dealers?

Hah! I DON"T recall this, but I DO think we had to learn the lingo of STDs (like "the Clap").

I went to public school, so we had the boys vs. girls puberty talks in elementary school, and then the health class "DON"T DO DRUGS!" and "OMG SEX!" talks in middle school. We did have a required semester of health class in high school, but I don't recall much sex ed in there--I think they figured it was too late by then, since we also had a nursery in my high school.

I don't recall not knowing where babies came from, but I had one of those "Where Did My Little Sister Come From" books, when she was born when I was 4, and my brother was born when I was 6, so the "a mommy and a daddy love each other very much" intro and then more detailed info was pretty well laid groundwork.

Oh, and I did have to take Catholic Sunday School "supposedly well known figures like a rando football player talk about not having sex before marriage" bunch of classes, also in middle school.

I'm just sputtering.

and sending the brackets and ma~~~

Oh, bonny. If there's one thing I've learned, you never know where the triggers are going to come from. Which is an awful, awful thing.

So sorry. {{{}}}

{{{bonny}}}

Sometimes the humans make me despair utterly, and sometimes it's just as shocking, in the other direction, how much people can survive with grace and wit and selves intact. I just wish we could find some way to get to the grace without the terrible pain.

Bless you, sweeties. Please don't feel sorry for me. I stand firm on the foundation of...even with all that, I became me, and that's not bad.

It's just, every few blue moons, as you say amyth, with no apparent cause, I just sort of deflate.

Honestly, I really wrestled with saying anything at all because I don't want to be that ugly wet blanket. But I couldn't shake it...and this is one of the safest places on earth to be me.