Mom, Do You Know What S-E-X Spells?

You might recognize those lyrics from Bruno Mars’ “The Lazy Song.”  I too recognized those words the other day as my newly turned 8-year-old son sang them at the kitchen table while doing his homework.

“Nothing at all.  Ooh hoo.  Ooh hoo.  Ooh ooh ooh.”

I stood at the sink washing the dishes, listening to my son, a boy who rarely carries a tune within a 5 mile radius of anyone who could possibly hear him.  It was nice. 

 “Tomorrow I’ll wake up, do some P90X. Meet a really nice girl, have some really nice sex…”

WHAT?!?!  What did my baby boy just say?  No, he didn’t say sex did he?  Oh my gosh, he did.  And why am I surprised?  After all, I do know the lyrics.  But how did he know the lyrics?  Whenever the song comes on the radio, I turn the volume all the way down right before Bruno belts out the S word.  Oh no, how was I supposed to handle this?  He’s only 8!  I’m not ready for the SEX TALK yet!

He must have known that that particular line in the song would trigger a reaction because he stopped singing.  I slowly turned around to look at him, not wanting to make any sudden movements that might insinuate I was concerned by what had just come out of his mouth.  But he knew.  He stared at me with that guilty smirk of his, that smile that sets off alarms that he’s either lying or he just said something to purposely test the boundaries of good and bad.

“Mom, do you know what S-E-X spells?”

“Yes I do.  Do you?”  If he noticed I was deflecting the real, underlying question with another question, he didn’t let on.

“Yes.”

“Where did you hear that?”  Yes, I was stalling for time to figure out how the hell I was going to get out of explaining what sex was (and silently cursing my husband for missing this).

“S-C-H-O-O-L.” 

And that was it.  He went back to doing his homework and humming the Lazy Song.  I waited a minute or two before turning back to my dishes, wondering why he ended the conversation so abruptly when he clearly knew the word SEX was an attention grabber, a word that caused his mother to stop what she was doing and engage in mid-homework conversation. 

I’m guessing he was once again testing his boundaries, just as he did the first (and only) time he dropped an f-bomb in my presence.  I’m also guessing I should take this conversation as a warning that I need to prepare myself for the official SEX TALK.  This was just a preview before the feature presentation.  I won’t be able to deflect his questions much longer.

I think back to the SEX TALK I had with my own mother.  It too was initiated by a pop star and a song I repeatedly heard on the radio.  Madonna’s “Like a Virgin.”  And I was right around Big C’s age when I approached my own mother, probably with the same guilty smirk, and asked her what a virgin was. 

So I guess I need to start preparing my SEX TALK because if it’s not Bruno Mars, it will be some other pop star or some other kid at school who will plant those questions in my son’s head.  And I want to be the one to gross him out give him the facts.  I only hope that next time I’ll have the courage to answer those unsaid, underlying questions instead of deflecting them. 

Or maybe I just need to think of a better means of deflecting.  “So Big C…Santa Claus isn’t real.”  Oh yeah, that would definitely get me out of a SEX TALK.  What do you think?