Fear and Loathing in the Fifth Grade

After six predecessors and as many fearful, "longest walks of their lives" down that mile-long corridor to the library, today our family marks the final step across the threshold to adulthood and eternal uncertainty, as our eleven year old gets his turn at...The 5th Grade Sex Ed Movie.

Yesterday afternoon, our youngest, Charles, returned home from his day of matriculation, lost and bewildered, as though he had just watched a super-slow motion video of a family of chicklings being transformed into road kill by a Mack truck. After repeated inquiries I sat beside him and, putting my arm around his shoulder, said, "Charles, did something happen at school? What's wrong, buddy?" Looking up with tears streaming down both sides of his not-yet adolenscent face, he replied,

"They're showing that movie at school tomorrow, and I don't wanna see it".

I don't recall having the same abiding fear of "the movie", which was actually a filmstrip (complete with the "beep" to turn to the next graphic), when we got it 38 years ago. But things have changed quite a bit in regards to how the public education system helps our young men begin that journey from pre-pubescent lover of all things sports or action-film related to neighborhood studmuffin.

First off, where my sixth grade class got the whole shi-bang as a class in one 60-minute filmstrip, now they seperate the information into two years; 5th grade focusing on body changes and personal hygeine, 6th grade on sexual development and reproductive roles. The film/discussion class are now also seperated by gender and the parents are invited to come along for support and participation.

Looking back, I think both changes in teh presentation are excellent ideas. Not only does it break the information into more age appropriate levels, but the seperation of boys and girls serves two purposes; removing the uncomfortability of inevitible eye contact with the cute little red headed girl during a discussion on insemination and the more relaxed, gender specific audience making it a little more likely that questions will be asked instead of staring at the clock and hoping the torturous experience will end soon.

I also think it a stroke of genius to invite the parents to participate. This also offers two wonderful opportunities; to have some input into how this information is for presented to your child, and also to take what, as yesterday's conversation proved, can be a highly emotional and borderline terrifying event and transform it into a strong, positive bonding experience. The tradition in this household is that "The Movie" is immediately followed by an extended lunch period at the pizza parlor of the child's choice (although I think maybe Lisa and Caroline did Olive Garden, but I don't really remember, having completely erased both her fifth and sixth grade "movie days" from my mind for all time and eternity, having protested, to no avail, that she should have been made to wait until she was at least 30 to be exposed to such corruptably influential information).

Some things, however, have not changed. I recall during the summer in between 5th and 6th grade, some older kids on the block who had already been subjected to and survived "the filmstrip" told us tales of imagineable horror and eventual embarassment beyond description. That time honored tradition continues today. I asked Charles why he was so upset by having to see The Movie, imagining that instructions inside a box of tampons would prove more embarassing to an 11 year old boy than anything he would hear or see tomorrow, and that in fact, all the children had been made keenly aware of the content of tomorrow's class.

"Dad!", he bellowed, "I don't wanna see a movie of people...doing it! That's just sick!".

Explaining to him in excrutiating detail about what tomorrow would be about and how there would be little if any mention of sex or sexual activity and certainly no video of such things, he relaxed and a few minutes later was happy and smiling at the kitchen table attacking his math homework. Go figure.

Last night, I thought about my little guy's fear and loathing at even the ridiculous suggestion that he would be forced to sit with his class and watch two people having sex, and it made me think about when I was in the 5th grade. Our teacher, Mrs. Tout had us make these racing cars out of dish soap bottles, which we could decorate to our liking. The three self-ordained "top dogs", Bill Connelly, Mark Santos, and Shaun Reilly, adorned their racing machines with the number "69", making sure everyone in class knew that was the coolest number and then made a point of asking every boy in the class if they knew what it meant.

As I recalled this oddly memorable moment of my upbringing, I thought about how my youth was vastly different from that of my children. We didn't have MTV or network sex. When I was 11, Mike and Carol Brady were a big deal because they weren't in single beds. Our Madonna was Karen Carpenter, our Brad Pitt was Paul Newman. And where today, unsupervised children can pull up the Internet and find hardcore sex clips in an instant, we had the underwear section of the Sears catalogue.

That grimacing look of disgust on Charles' face as he explained the reason for his angst yesterday, at the moment made we want to laugh. Thinking back on it, however, I smile and am grateful.

Not that he will always find physical intimacy to be disgusting; there will be other "talks", and hopefully, the lessons of love and respect and privacy I have learned will override the "locker talk" he will no doubt overhear. But as I watched him eating his breakfast this morning, the daily commics dutifully splattered with milk and his hair loking as though it had never been introduced to the prickly end of a hair brush, I thought to myself...

He's 11. Maybe a year or so more filled with the fear of "girl cuties" isn't such a bad thing.