The Birds and The Bees

Back when I was married, I was a bit of a romantic.  I liked to give gifts that had meaning, particularly gifts I made myself.  Now I wasn't always the handiest guy in the world, but I figured that my wife would appreciate the effort that much more if I made her something myself.  Besides, I'm a guy, so it follows logically that I can do guy-stuff if I put my head to it, and drink a goodly sum of  beer during construction of said gift.

We had a very large king-size bed in those days.   The kind you can put yourselves, 3 kids, 3 dogs, two cats and an assortment of book, toys, chewies and other sundries in and still have room to stretch out.  The bed was so tall we actually had a set of steps on each side of it so my young daughter could climb up and crawl in with us when she wanted.

My wife always wanted a nice blanket chest to place at the foot of the bed, to put the "display pillows" in.  If you're a woman or a married guy, you are undoubtedly familiar with the concept.   These are pillows that sit on the bed, but you are NOT allowed to lay your head on them.  When you want to go to sleep, you have to take the display pillows off the bed and sleep on the "regular pillows".  Hence the desire for the blanket chest.  She wanted something to keep the pillows "organized" and the room tidy.   The problem was, the damn bed was so big we could never find a blanket chest that was big enough to look like it matched.

So a couple of months before Valentines day, back around the time my daughter (who is now almost 15) was in second grade, I started looking for do-it-yourself plans for building one.  The plans I found seemed doable, especially since they came from a book called "Weekend Furniture Projects".  The instructions said the total construction time was 3 days, so I picked up the material and went to work.

Three weeks later, the finished product turned out looking surprisingly good, and the finish even matched the bed perfectly.  My wife was pleased, if not impressed, my ego was intact, and life was good.

What I didn't count on was my 8 year old daughter thinking that the most comfortable place in the world to lay her head down was a blanket chest full of fluffy pillows.  So the display pillows did eventually get a work out.  From time to time, my daughter would come in our room, and announce that she was going to sleep in the "crate".  Why she called it a crate is beyond me, I swear the thing looked like a real blanket chest, honest.

So about now you're probably thinking that this story was supposed to be about The Birds and The Bees.  You may even be saying to yourself "I thought this story as about the friggin birds and the bees!".  It is, and here's why...

For most of my daughters early years, I did most of the bedtime stuff with her.  I read the stories, sprayed the monster spray, checked her ears for bad dreams and otherwise tucked her in each night.  On the night in question, my wife was out of the house for one reason or another, so I was alone with my now 9 year old daughter, in our bed, reading her a bed-time story.

At the end of the story, Kate looked up at me sweetly and said "Dad, can I sleep in the crate?".  I thought for  minute and replied "honey I think mom and me would like some alone time tonight".  To which she said "I can sleep in the crate, and if you want to have sex, you can close the lid".

After I picked my jaw up off the floor, I asked her how she knew about sex and without missing a beat she began very confidently to tell me that she know all about sex.  So of course I had to ask for the details being her dad and all.  Now it's important to note that my wife and I had discussed how we would approach sexuality questions with Kate when they came up, as we knew they would.  We decided that we'd use the scientific names for body parts, and, that if she asked a question, we would answer it.  We naively assumed that she would only ask when she was old enough to hear the answers.

Kate's description of the act wasn't too far off, although in her mind the man just laid on the woman and they kiss and hug, and then you have a baby.  I chuckled a bit and told her that she was pretty close and tried to leave it at that.  And that's when things started to go haywire.  Kate asked what she was wrong about, and demanded the whole story.  All the time I'm having this conversation I'm saying a prayer in the back of my mind for my wife to come home, PLEASE.

Needless to say, no prayers were answered, so I sucked it up, took a short pause, and, using my best I-am-the-wise-dad voice began the sanitized scientific description of the act of sexual congress between a man and a woman.  It went pretty much like this...

"Well Kate, when a man and a woman love each other, and they're MARRIED, around age 40, the man puts his penis in the woman's vagina.  A woman has an two organs in her body called ovaries.  What? Yes, I said penis, and - What?  Yes YOU have ovaries too.  Now the ovaries have eggs in them and the man's penis sprays the eggs with fertilizer, and, sometimes, but not all the time, the fertilizer makes the egg turn into a baby".  She looked a bit incredulous at the sound of my description, but I charged on, trying not to lose momentum until I could finish.

When I was through giving her the "talk", she thanked me, but still looked a bit confused.  "Kate, is there something you don't understand?" I asked.  "I think I get it Dad, but there's one thing I don't  understand".  "What's that?" I replied, feeling pretty full of myself for getting through such a significant milestone with only one question.

Kate thought for a moment, looked me straight in the eye and said "How do you get your penis back?".  I thought for a moment, looked her straight in the eye right back and said "you don't, mom keeps it after that".

That isn't the worst part.  The following evening I received several phone calls from parents of Kate's friends, who, through tear-filled laughter, wanted to know if I had a key to that drawer...