I could be barking up the wrong tree on sex

When I was growing up sex was not discussed in the home. I thought vagina was pronounced ‘vaghina’ in a sort of a German way and penis was pronounced as in a writing implement. I knew roughly where they were from the problem pages in my mother’s magazines but I had no idea how to pronounce them. I struggled big time to imagine my parents having carnal knowledge of each other and hoped I was the result of an angel appearing on my mother’s shoulder. As I got older nothing changed much. Until one day my mother, not long before her death, chose to share some intimate details of a story about a weirdo who was ringing up our house and when she answered he would make some very graphic inquiries as to the well being of the more intimate parts of her anatomy. I nearly fell off the chair. I preferred the days of not talking about stuff.

So when my son collected me the other night to drop me home after many glasses of wine and much food I should have kept my mouth shut for the entire journey. We were passing the park very near my house and a gobshite was driving a motor bike very close to our derriere. My son was incensed and jammed on the brakes. He passed us and drove into the park. Now the park has a reputation for being a place of dubious repute after dark so I announced that he was probably going dogging.

My son jammed on the brakes again and the look on his face said it all. Complete disbelief. He clearly didn’t think I knew about such things, which is understandable given that when I was regaling a friend with my story she thought it was something to do with dogs and funny stuff. So perhaps I should allow my kids to think that I’m completely ignorant on such matters and they are immaculate conceptions.