“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.
Shorter URL for sharing: http://www.erosblog.com/?p=1111
Damn, that’s funny…
“It’s a big rubber penis!”
Well, let’s hope it’s a BIG rubber penis, cuz really… what’s the point of a small rubber penis?
Funny, albeit horrifying for a 14 year old, story!
bacchus, if we look up “tact” in the dictionary, there will be a picture of your 14-year-old self, i’m sure.
It is difficult to explain things to those who do not know, and are of the religioouse philosophy. You did very well I am impressed
Reminds me of a story:
A kid named Mike had just heard the word dildo for the first time. He didn’t know what a dildo was, just that it was bad. While having dinner a short time after, his mom asked how school went. He replied: “Man, Mrs. So-and-so is a freakin’ dildo.” His older sisters got a big kick out of it, but I guess his folks weren’t feeling it. I’m guessing he found out what a dildo was later that evening. I found out when I was 13.
i got to explain ‘vanilla’ and ‘bdsm’ to my step-mother’s mother over the weekend… in the quiet dining room of a full restaurant.
that was interesting, to say the least!
Bacchus, you just made my day. What a great story. :)
OK, that reminds me… one time I was in some upscale boutique in California with my oh-so-rich-bitch step mother. She had a fur coat, and we were walking by some scarf and glove department when all of a sudden she grabs a scarf and very loudly proclaims “Oh, this would be lovely with my beaver!” (her coat) The sales women snickered politely, my step sister and I went into hysterics (we were teenagers) and then we had to take her aside and explain what a beaver was. To her credit, she thought it was fucking hysterical and couldn’t wait to tell my dad, who really wished he had been there.
That’s a really fun one, but the thing that struck me was the tree house. My friends and I lived in a large, newer, neighborhood that butted up against a large dense forrest. We’d always play in the forest and cleared an area far from our homes. Later in life, my friends and I cleared more underbrush, and even chopped down a few trees. We had built a two foot high fence around the perimeter, and that’s where we had all of our porn, booze and cigarettes. We’d have parties by the fire pit, and take our girlfriends out there for a bit of privacy. One of my friend’s father owned a beer distributorship, and he’d always work summers for him, well, he’d always order one or two extra cases of beer for “The Hut”, we had some really good times there. Unfortunately, a couple of years after we had gone to college, “The Hut” was ripped down when a new housing project was being built. We had some really good time there, and we never got caught.
I worked in a Public Health clinic in the ’70s. An RN in her fifties started to use the term “stupid dildo”. Knowing that this naive women did not know what she was saying, left most of us biting our tongues off.
One of the other nurses took her aside and explained the term, and ended our fun.
A dildoe, is someone that would like to be a prick, but dosent have quite what it takes!
Bacchus, did you grow up in Michigan…or this family was just from MI originally? Great story…made my morning!
I had an unbelieveably liberal upbringing. I remember reading “Inside Linda Lovelace” aged about 12 and being quizzed on it by my uncle’s then girlfriend (the uncle had lent me the book and then told said girlfriend that I had read it). Made me blush something rotten having to explain the plot of “Deep Throat” to an attractive 22yo.
Reminds me of my “Fuck” Story.
My sister is 6 years younger than I. When she was in 1st or 2nd grade (7 or 8 – I would have been 13 or 14), one day at bathtime she asked my mother what the word “fuck” meant — the kids had had to use the upperclass bathrooms because of a plumbing malfunction and this word was written on the bathroom stall there.
I heard the commotion because the house, while nice, was not that sound-proof and slinked up to my 2nd floor bedroom trying to keep from laughing out loud. Mom was, like, “WHERE ON EARTH did you see something like that? What FILTH are they exposing you to?” (I should mention my folks are/were fervent right-wing baptist ignoramouses, one of the best things that’s happened to me is that when I bought a house in Kansas city’s ‘urbia’ my mom will NEVER visit because she’s a bigot.)
Later she came to my room and asked me what that word MEANT. I prefaced my reply with “Promise not to hit me.” And got an affirmation to that.
When i told her it was a rude word for sexual intercourse she started ask how I knew, then stopped herself and left my room.
(the night before I married the man I’m STILL happily married to 27 years later today, she came to my room and told me about the ‘awful thing my husband was going to make me do.” when I realized she meant having sex I restrained myself from laughter (we’d discovered two years prior that it was the most wonderful indoor game of all) because I didn’t want to have slap marks on my face in my wedding pix …momma was a mean slapper
eale, that made me laugh out loud.
bacchus – ‘marrital aid’, now that’s something i wouldn’t have thought of. good on ya, (well, the 14 y/o version of you)
I have similar story. My family was taking a car trip of about 4 hours to a major metropolitan area. My parents and 6 (of 7) brothers and sisters were packed in the car. After about 2 hours of being on the road my younger brother, about 12 at the time, asked my mother if dildo was a “nice word to say.” I tried hard not to laugh out loud, but couldn’t contain myself when my mother responded “as far as I know it is.” I looked at my father and said “I’ll tell Matt what a dildo is, but you have to tell mom.”
For a number of years, “dingle berry” seemed to me to be a particularly euphonious, somehow rude thing to call someone who was being foolish. Only recently did someone make me actually look it up. No embarrassing story around that, but it turned out to be somewhat more pungent than I had thought.
These stories reminded me of some comments I’ve already made elsewhere on ErosBlog, so I looked them up to avoid duplication. The following posting has a great collection of similar humor and quite a few references to the word dildo:
http://www.eros...toys/
When I was in grad school, one of the foreign students asked me to help his wife with an english vocabulary question where a translating dictionary didn’t help.
The latest Bond movie was Octopussy and she couldn’t understand what the title meant – she figured out “octopus” and “pussycat,” but that didn’t explain the title.
I carefully explained the slang and the joke while her husband looked very apologetic for putting me in an awkward spot. She was not embarrassed; I was not embarrassd (only concerned that she might get upset); only the husband was bothered by the situation.