The Facts of Life

The Facts of Life

When I was young, like 9, my Mom, trying to be progressive, bought a book designed to teach children about the facts of life. This was in the 50's. My Mom had been brought up in a household that had Victorian type views on sex. The only sex advice my Mom received from her Mom was sex was something she had to submit to and endure as part of her wifely duties. It was in general a dirty, unpleasant, but necessary task. My Grandmother had never actually had sex herself. She was only repeating what she had been told. It had sounded so repulsive to her that she could never let herself engage in the act. She adopted two girls, one being my Mom. I can only imagine my Mom's surprise when she found out that sex was actually fun and pleasurable. After she was married my Grandmother asked my Mom what it was like and was appalled to find out my Mom actually enjoyed it. At this time I did not really know anything about sex. I had once overheard a friend's older sister telling a friend that sex was fantastic and magical.

Being the oldest I was selected for the first reading. My Mom sat me down and began going through the book explaining how babies are made. The story my Mom read and told me probably made total sense but this was the way I heard it. A man and a woman fall in love and get married. They later decide they want to have a child. The man and woman then go into their bedroom, get on their bed, and the man gives his seed to the woman. The woman next goes to the doctor. She takes a test. If she passes the test the seed can then grow into a baby inside her body. Her belly gets big and after some time the baby is ready to come out. She goes back to the doctor this time at the hospital. At the hospital the doctor takes the baby out. Then the woman comes home with the new baby.

OK, let's start with seed. The only kind of seed I knew was the kind you planted to grow grass or maybe flowers with. I asked my Mom what kind of seed Dad had that made a baby. She explained in a rather confusing way calling it semen. Fine, it was a semen seed. That seemed like a rather odd name for a baby seed. Why wasn't it called a baby or human seed? Q: Where does Dad get these semen seeds? A: He just has them. Q: Don't you have some? A: No. Q: You have to get this semen seed from a man? A: Yes. Q: Why can't you have them? A: Only men have them. Q: Why? A: Because that's the way it is. I still didn't get it. These seeds had to come from somewhere. Q: How many semen seeds does Dad have? A: Lots. Q: Like 50? A: Many more that that, more than you can count. Wow, I wondered where he kept them. Maybe they were in the garage with the grass seed. Q: Why does Dad have to give you the semen seed in the bedroom and on a bed? A: Well he doesn't but that's the most common place. Q: So can he give it to you anywhere like in the kitchen or the backyard or in the car? A: Well yes but you will want a private area like the bedroom. Q: Because it's a secret? A: Not exactly it's just the way most people like to do it.

Moving on, what about this baby test: The only kind of tests I knew at that time were the ones I'd had in school. I had never even considered that you were supposed to take a test before you were allowed to have a baby. Q: What happens if you fail the baby test? A; I will not have a baby. Q: What happens to the semen seed? Do you return it to Dad? A: No, of course not. Q: Does he then have to get rid of the rest of his semen seed? A: No Q: Can he at least give it to someone else? A: He better not. He's not supposed to. Q: So what does he do with all that semen seed. A: He only gives it to me. Q: Baby or no baby? A: Yes.

This whole baby making process was seeming a bit off to me so I suggested a potential improvement. Q: Why not go to the doctor first, take the test and if you pass let the doctor give you the seed? This question seemed to annoy my Mom. A: No, it has to come from your father. Besides it is a very private intimate act only shared by couples who love each other. Q: Why is that? A: It involves very private parts of the body. My Mom then went to one of the pictures in the book. It showed two bodies pressed together but the bodies were cut off about mid-thigh and then just above the stomach. The bodies were more like what you would see in a biology book. The bodies themselves were a cross-section so you see all the internal organs and such. I couldn't figure out what I was looking at. I didn't recognize it as two human bodies. It just looked like a big blob of something and besides my focus at that point was just to find the semen seed. I'm hoping this seed would show some sign of sprouting and maybe I would see a little head, or at least something I could recognize. I couldn't seem to find it so I pointed at the picture. Q: Is this the semen seed? A: No, not all of it is the semen. Q: Where's the semen seed? A: It's in the vagina. That's a very private area of my body that only your Father gets to visit. Q: OK, Dad actually puts the semen seed in your vagina and after that you go see the doctor to take the baby test? A: That's right. Q: If you fail the test does the semen seed need to be removed from your vagina? A: No, it doesn't work that way. Q: How does the semen seed know that you failed the test? Thinking that if it was still in my Mom it needed to refrain from making the baby. Q: How does it know to stop? A: Because I failed the test. It just knows? This was one heck of a seed! I guessed that was the magical part.

Moving on: Q: Doesn't the doctor see your vagina when he pulls the baby out at the hospital? A: He doesn't pull it out, I push it out. Q: So why do you need a Doctor? A: He helps and makes sure everything goes right and sometimes, yes, he has to help pull the baby out. Q: So at this point he sees your vagina right? A: Well yes, but that is different.

At this point my Mom is a bit exasperated with me. Probably thinking she has the dumbest son ever and she will never try this again. I think neither my sister nor my brother got the opportunity to see the baby making book.

This whole process was a little disappointing (and not really what I might have thought.) Nothing in the process seemed particularly fantastic or even fun. I still had some unanswered questions. Like where do all those seeds come from? How do you get them? Why is putting a seed in someone's vagina so private and intimate it can only be done by the father but the taking the baby out of the vagina can be done by anyone? Why is there a test and why don't women take the test before they get married so they know if they can have babies? Well anyway, I now knew the baby making story even if it did not make complete sense to me and left me with a bunch of questions.

Here's what I learned: Only married men could have legitimate semen seeds. Married men get a ton of baby seeds from somewhere. I was guessing it must be from the clergy person who married them. That would explain why a baby who is born out of wedlock is called illegitimate because that woman somehow got a seed illegally. The married man puts one of these seeds in his wife's vagina. How does he do this? He must use his fingers. The middle finger is the longest so that's probably the finger most often used and that explains why everyone knows that finger as the “fuck you” finger. There's a test all potential moms have to take and pass before they can have a baby. Some women cannot have children because they can't seem to pass that test. Evidently this test is like an IQ test in that it's not the kind of test you can really study for hence, some people will never be able to do well on it. A baby develops in this private area in the woman called the vagina. The vagina is a special area set up for baby making. It is off limits to everyone except the husband except at baby time.

Those were the facts of life as I understood them and now I was in the know. I decided not to tell this to my friends but rather keep this information to myself. I figured that they would probably never believe me. That turned out to be one of my better decisions.