I recalled an EOF-worthy story from my childhood.
This is true.
When I was very young -- I don't even know how young; let's say about 5 -- my mother tried to explain to me what my testicles were for.
I don't know if I had asked a question or what, but that's possible, since I was an inquisitive kid.
My mom said, "there are babies inside them."
Ok, sure. That's stupidly over-simplified, but kids believe anything their parents tell them. And in my young mind, I imagined a tiny, fully-formed little baby curled up inside each testicle.
And at some point I thought, "maybe they would like it if I played with them," so I would fondle them, imagining they were having fun being bounced around....
It wasn't even any kind of masturbatory thing at that age -- I didn't get pleasure from it -- I just thought the tiny babies in my testicles would enjoy being played with, so that they would know I cared about them.
One day my dad saw me doing that....
"What are you doing?" he asked in an accusatory tone.
"Playing with them," I replied (meaning "the little babies").
"Why?" he sharply asked in an even more accusatory tone, glaring at me.
I wanted to say, "I thought they might like it," which may have lead to further questions, where I might have explained I was talking about the babies that mom had told me were in there... but his increasingly angry demeanor just caused me to shrug my shoulders or something, since it was clear I must have been doing something wrong.
To which he, still in an angry voice, said, "Stop doing that. You don't see other people walking around doing that, do you?"
So... ever since that day, I have never touched my testicles again.....
Ok, maybe that last part isn't true (by a lot!), but really, parents are freaking stupid involving sexual issues with their kids, and more often that not, they pass on their own hang-ups and sexual dysfunctions to their children.
Just tell your kids the friggin' truth about their bodies instead of dumb stories about storks and cabbage patches, and over-simplifications of the human reproductive system, ya know?
Just tell your curious 5-year-old kids, "when you are older, your testicles will produce sperm that can combine with an egg cell from inside a woman to create a baby in her belly."
Is that so hard?
And the shaming around being curious about exploring our bodies.... Why do parents react that way? It was probably passed on to them by their own parents (thanks a lot, grandma!)
"Well, dad, it's my wiener, and when I take a bath, I can wash it as fast as I want!"
This is true.
When I was very young -- I don't even know how young; let's say about 5 -- my mother tried to explain to me what my testicles were for.
I don't know if I had asked a question or what, but that's possible, since I was an inquisitive kid.
My mom said, "there are babies inside them."
Ok, sure. That's stupidly over-simplified, but kids believe anything their parents tell them. And in my young mind, I imagined a tiny, fully-formed little baby curled up inside each testicle.
And at some point I thought, "maybe they would like it if I played with them," so I would fondle them, imagining they were having fun being bounced around....
It wasn't even any kind of masturbatory thing at that age -- I didn't get pleasure from it -- I just thought the tiny babies in my testicles would enjoy being played with, so that they would know I cared about them.
One day my dad saw me doing that....
"What are you doing?" he asked in an accusatory tone.
"Playing with them," I replied (meaning "the little babies").
"Why?" he sharply asked in an even more accusatory tone, glaring at me.
I wanted to say, "I thought they might like it," which may have lead to further questions, where I might have explained I was talking about the babies that mom had told me were in there... but his increasingly angry demeanor just caused me to shrug my shoulders or something, since it was clear I must have been doing something wrong.
To which he, still in an angry voice, said, "Stop doing that. You don't see other people walking around doing that, do you?"
So... ever since that day, I have never touched my testicles again.....
Ok, maybe that last part isn't true (by a lot!), but really, parents are freaking stupid involving sexual issues with their kids, and more often that not, they pass on their own hang-ups and sexual dysfunctions to their children.
Just tell your kids the friggin' truth about their bodies instead of dumb stories about storks and cabbage patches, and over-simplifications of the human reproductive system, ya know?
Just tell your curious 5-year-old kids, "when you are older, your testicles will produce sperm that can combine with an egg cell from inside a woman to create a baby in her belly."
Is that so hard?
And the shaming around being curious about exploring our bodies.... Why do parents react that way? It was probably passed on to them by their own parents (thanks a lot, grandma!)
"Well, dad, it's my wiener, and when I take a bath, I can wash it as fast as I want!"