Yes, it's true. My son went to health class. Remember health class? All I remember is an embarrassing conversation about menstruation, which came in handy when I 'became a woman,' according to my mother, a few months later. Thankfully, health class provided me with sanitary napkins the size of bricks as I was initiated into 'womanhood.'
However, health class in 2012 is a bit different. After my son's first day, during dinner, he broached the subject of heath class, explaining to us that the teacher showed numerous pictures of flowers and mammals. He remembered that everything reproduces, and I'm thinking, "Awesome! This makes sense to him!" He then told us that an egg is the size of a period (dot). Inwardly I snickered because period-egg, simply too funny for words. I told him that women have about a million of those eggs for their lifetime. My son, the grating debator, informed me that I was "wrong!" Men and women, he continued, have eggs. For a moment, I tried to convince him that he was wrong, but then I concluded that Wednesday's class was going to be eye-opening for him. Never one to back down from an opportunity to make a smart-aleck response, he said, "I have a feeling after Wednesday's class, I'm going to really regret you signing me up for this class." Naturally, he used his snottiest tone for that comment.
He also reminded us that on Wednesday, the fourth graders were going to be divided into boys and girls, and then separated from one another. In fact, he added, they were going to learn about 'reprocessing.' He had to say that just as I was drinking some water, which I promptly choked on. I corrected him, telling him it was reproduction, but then he was curious about the definition of reprocessing.
His dad, the man raised with brothers in a Catholic household, assured our son that he could ask any questions of his father and they would be answered. I snickered at that too. This is the man who was embarrassed to show our little guy how to pee standing up; I had to argue with him to do so since I don't have the appropriate peeing-while-standing-up equipment. The guy who, on our first camping trip together, dug a 'pee pit' for us to use, which was really sweet except there were rocks on both sides. He didn't realize I didn't 'go' quite the same way. I can't imagine he will answer our son's questions in a matter of fact way.
Wednesday's class was even more enlightening than Monday's. Without looking at me, my son told me they saw pictures of naked women and their body parts. When I asked which body parts, he cried, "ALL of THEM, Mom, all of them..." He even saw the body parts where the eggs are stored. Finally, in an anguished tone, he told me that he will soon have sperm. I wanted to talk about the subject more, but he was still astounded about the sperm revelation. That night, while cooking corn, one of the ears wasn't fully developed. Noticing this, our son informed us that, "Sperm mustn't have done its job on the corn." His father mumbled a reply, correcting him, sort of, about that piece of information.
He's also asked for definitions of words he has heard at school but doesn't know what they mean. After the great "shit" fiasco of 2011--he used the word after hearing someone else say it, and he got in trouble at school for saying it--we have an agreement that he can ask me any word he doesn't know before he decides to use it. We talked about 'retard,' 'gay,' and 'sexy.'When he asked his father what 'gay' meant, his father gave a truly biased answer, one I felt was unfair. I tried my best to give an unbiased answer to that question. I want my son to make up his mind on his own. But today's question was the biggest one yet: how does a man's sperm fertilize a woman's egg? We ran out of time to discuss it, but I'm sure it's going to come up soon.
Health class has been eye-opening for my son, fostered great conversation between us, and has been a chance for me to talk with my son, not at him. Well, in all honesty, to laugh a bit as watch his mind at work, "reprocessing" his new information.
