Back in the day…

Kimberly Easton was a little taller than me, light-brown, and a little heavier. She had pretty dark brown hair and dark, almost black, expressive eyes. She always had lots of friends, but was loyal to a select few and seemed to forever be on top of the latest happenings with the other kids. She was quick-witted and quick-tongued, somehow seeming to talk herself into trouble and back out of it in a hurry. Kim loved herself some gossip too.

“Girl, you see Nelson’s thang stickin’ out through his shorts?!” Kim said one day. “It looked big, didn’t it?” We were walking to our lockers at the end of our sixth period PE class. We were now seventh graders at Herschel Middle.
“I didn’t see it,” I lied, trying to sound dismissive. It was hard to miss. We had played volleyball in class, and the ball nearly hit me in the face one time because I was so busy looking at the print in Nelson’s shorts, imagining how he might look with his clothes off. Then I had spent the rest of the class feeling self-conscious thinking someone had noticed me looking at it.
“I don’t know how you missed it!” Kim continued, too loudly, in the hallway. “He probably wouldn’t know what to do wit’ it anyway!”
“You wouldn’t either!” I joked with her.
“Psst. Whatever!”

We loved singing like the performers on TV, belting the lyrics to the latest popular hits while taking turns with the big wooden spoon we used as a microphone. At Kim’s house, our audience was either her mom, Mrs. Easton, or her cousin Terrence, who was always around. He was a tall, brown-skinned, lanky boy with extra-long arms and legs, and huge feet that he couldn’t seem to help but drag on the floor, scuffing his fresh Nikes. Terrence had sleepy, hazel eyes and his left eyebrow had a natural crook in it that always made him look like he was mad at somebody, although he rarely was. He was the same age as us, in the same grade.
Terrence would sit on the couch and listen to his Walkman, rolling his eyes at us and shaking his head.
“Yall look crazy. That’s not how Salt-N-Pepa do it when they on stage!” he said defiantly one day. “They do like this!”
He took off the headphones to his Walkman and got up to do the dance that the female rap duo originated.
“Ooooh baby baby…baby baby, ooooh baby baby…b-baby baby!” Terrance sang off key.
Me and Kim cracked up as he tried to copy the sexy gyrations they did in the Push It video.
“GO TERRENCE! GO TERRENCE!” we shouted between laughs.
As we played the cassettes over and over while singing our versions of the songs, Mrs. Easton eventually yelled, “Yall go outside RIGHT NOW! I don’t wanna HEAR that mess no more!”
By midnight, we were all worn out and the three of us crashed on top of Kim’s bed as always, snoring away until morning.
Although I talked to her all the time, I still didn’t tell Kim about my curiosity about boys and how I imagined them making me feel, even at times when our conversation was about boys in particular. I was still too embarrassed to let anyone know I even thought about stuff like that. What if I was just weird?

By the time I got to high school, I spent a lot of time just thinking about sex. Still a virgin, I grew more and more curious every day about what my first time would feel like and who it would be with. I had heard from a couple of girls at school that it hurt, but most of them said they liked it.
My parents never mentioned sex to me at all, outside of Mama answering questions I had about my period long before I had it. I got my period back when I was ten.
At fourteen, I felt there was a lot more that I needed to know, but I obviously wasn’t gonna learn it from my parents. They still made me cover my eyes and ears during the love scenes they showed on basic cable television. Sometimes, my dad would jokingly say, “You don’t need to know about those birds and bees yet, do you girl?”
Embarrassed, I would reply, “Eww, Dad, no!”
Maybe I should have taken that as my invitation to ask some questions, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. Everything I knew about sex, outside of the dirty movies I snuck to watch sometimes and gossip around school, was whatever was taught in the videos we saw in health class about reproduction and how boys have wet dreams.

Going to high school had brought lots of new boys to look at and girls to talk about them, and I would listen to whatever information they had, trying to decide how much of it was true. Eventually, all the talk about their so-called secrets got old. I decided that when I had some secrets of my own, I would prefer to keep them to myself. That is, up until now.

–The moral of this story is talk to your kids about sex, because everyone else certainly is. A young person’s lack of knowledge could manifest in many negative ways.

Any thoughts or experiences to share?