“What’s A Dildo?”

The Girl With A One Track Mind recently got asked “What’s BDSM?” by her mother.

And it triggered a horrifying memory of an episode I had otherwise forgotten.

I grew up in a very small town a long way from anywhere. Social options were … limited. And girls? Forget about it. There was only one my age, and she didn’t like me. Hell, I didn’t even like her much. But she had brothers I got along with OK, so I hung at their house a lot.

Which is how, one day when I was perhaps fourteen, I found myself sitting at their kitchen table playing UNO with about six people ranging in age from littlest sister (age 9?) to The Mom, whose oldest kids were long gone from home. The Mom was a “fun” adult, tolerant of kids and never angry, made awesome chocolate eclairs and always with a kind word for everyone. She was also pretty for her age, blonde, and a devout, bury-all-her-problems-in-the-joy-of-Jesus fundamentalist Christian. Not preachy, but completely lost in belief, with no room in her worldview for other answers and no other way to cope with her many problems.

So one of the brothers made a particularly boneheaded move (hard to do while playing UNO) and Sister My Age made a derisive remark that concluded with “…you stupid dildo!”

Of course Littlest Sister pipes up from inside her cute little halo of blonde hair (these folks were all blonde Scandahoovians from Michigan): “What’s a dildo?”

Crickets.

The Mom got a curious look on her face, and in a completely friendly tone (no guile possible, just motherly interest) asked Sister My Age “Yes, dear, what’s a dildo?”

She meant the question honestly. She had no freakin’ idea.

I dunno how much Sister My Age knew. In that house, it’s possible she didn’t know any better than Mom. But she obviously knew it was something “bad”, because she stammered and blushed a bit, and then she protested that she didn’t know, it was just a name she’d heard someone call someone else in a movie (which she named).

And then, for my sins, The Mom turned her gaze on me. “[My Name], do you know what a dildo is?”

Did I mention my sins? My big one, here, was the sin of being smarter than any of the many children The Mom had ever popped from her loins. I was the big reader, the guy with the huge vocabulary, the guy who knew it all and (at fourteen) never failed to let everyone know it. The Mom knew I’d know, because she knew that I’d read every piece of printed matter that had every fallen under my eyes, whether I understood it or not.

Now it was my turn to blush and stammer. For indeed, I did know. I’d read The Joy Of Sex. Hell, I’d had to volunteer as librarian in our town’s little public library, just so I could smuggle it out of the place without having to write my name on the little paper slip in the front while being watched with basilisk eyes by the normal little-old-lady volunteers who’d known me since I was five. Also, there was an Older Brother of this family who used to hide his three porn magazines in the woods in a treehouse fort constructed for that very purpose. I’d invaded the fort and viewed them. I knew what was what.

And I was stuck. Claiming ignorance wouldn’t work. I had never been seen to do it. Nobody would believe me. Nor, looking back, do I think I was capable of it.

What was I supposed to do? I couldn’t very well look this nice eclair-baking Christian lady in the eye and say “It’s a big rubber penis.”

So I hemmed, and I hawed, and said I wasn’t sure, but I was pretty sure it wasn’t a very nice thing to call your little sister; I knew it was some sort of thing for married people, because wherever I had read the word (and, pious me, I could not remember where) it had also been called a “marital aid.”

That was the magic phrase; The Mom obviously knew what those were, because I saw the light dawn in her eyes, and then she said to Sister My Age “Don’t be calling your little sister that” and jumped up to offer some more eclairs.