1998: When the internet hadn’t happened and our Down Theres were undiscovered

This is a Canadian version of the Guardian’s long-time feature, Pass Notes. We’ll call it Tiny Explainer. Name: Ontario sex education curriculum, current version. Age: 2

Appearance: A 244-page document that Premier Doug Ford thinks is too much too soon. It tells young students about things queasy parents don’t mention. Seminal vesicles. Vas deferens. Epididymis.

What are those? I have no idea. I’m guessing they’re all connected? Actually, I lie. I haven’t forgotten because I never knew. In my day, the boys were herded out of class while the girls were taught Menstruation — strap yourself into diapers for seven days a month and sneak them out of the house in a special red wagon — and then we were given a pamphlet on “daintiness.”

Sounds horrible. So you’d think Ford and primitives like Tanya Granic Allen would be happy. They want kids to learn about sex the way they did. So, as the Beaverton suggests, everyone in class this September will pass around a rainsoaked — I do hope it’s rain — old Playboy found in the woods.

That still happens? No. Which is why cabinet ministers are being asked to check their dad’s special shelf in the garage. No, over there. Behind the tackle box. Is that not how we all honed our skills? And just look at us now. All porn is seen through the male gaze which means that adult women can’t have sex without envisioning themselves watching themselves have sex. It’s an out-of-body experience.

What do men think? When they’re told during sex, “She doesn’t like what she’s seeing you doing to her,” they think they’re being filmed. Later they realize there’s no sex tape, just a disappointed hook-up explaining film theorist Laura Mulvey’s “intersection of film, psychoanalysis and feminism in Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cine

ma.” So just like regular sex then. Very possibly. We’re straying from the subject. We are a colonial Tiny Explainer. This Canadian romps in the woods, leaping from stream to sapling. Allen referred to anal sex in the candidates’ TV debate. You noticed that too.

Did anyone take her up on it? One presumes she meant the word should not reach tender Grade 7 ears.

I’ll go Google it now. Oh don’t. Anyway, the remark spread and grew in the telling, with a man telling that nice Michael Coren that young students were being taught “to masterbate (sic) with vegetables.”

Which ones? I can’t do tomatoes, I’m allergic. Zucchini blossoms, yes, presumably before being dipped in tempura batter and fried. Don’t let the pan tip over. For women? Polenta. It’s not a vegetable. But it’s squishy. Back to school matters. Out with the new-ish curriculum trailing Wordsworthian clouds of glory, in with the Trainspotter curriculum of 1998. How has the old curriculum spent

its time? As a carnie in northern B.C. The things that boy has seen.

I do not recall 1998. Neither does Tiny Explainer. I looked up my diary and the first entry was: “The word for this month is sordid.” Why? I was still at the Sunday Sun.

What was sex like in 1998? The internet hadn’t happened. We had been taught about our Down Theres where resided our Unspeakables but nothing more. We had to use an ice pick and a coalminer’s flashlight for our first year of marriage.

Still married, I see. How many children do you have? Children?

Let’s talk nitty-gritty. Pedophiles. They’ll love the old curriculum. In 1998, Grade 1 kiddies would point vaguely to their Swimsuit Area—they thought it was around their ankles, the way Mommy starts out — and tell their parents zilch. Now they say, “That man over there touched my penis and said, ‘This is our little secret, right?’ ” Sometimes they get audio on their phones. Kids today. But that’s good. Not for sex offenders. What was the hit song of 1998? Too Close, by Next. Or Next, by Too Close, whatever. The lyrics: “I wonder if she could tell I’m hard right now, hmmm/Baby when we’re grinding I get so excited/You’re making it hard for me/I feel a little poke coming through.” That is arousing? If you’re a Tory MPP, it is off the charts. Time’s up, Tiny Explainer. 1998 was a slow year even for the ’90s. Google was born, Jean Chrétien was prime minister and Titanic was a hit. But one thing was still true: Ontario genitals were an undiscovered country.