“Let me tell you ’bout the birds and the bees and the flowers and the trees … and a thing called love.”
— Herbert Newman, 1965
Remember when “the birds and the bees” was a euphemism for the “facts of life” which was a euphemism for sex?
Last week Sam and I found ourselves in the company of three gentlemen who were discussing television’s sexually explicit advertising. One gentleman, we’ll call Ed, talked in generalities and said, “I worry about my grandson, who is in the room watching the sports channel when these commercials come on. What do I say to him?”
The second gentleman, we’ll call Ted, furrowed his brows and said, “I hate to discuss this in mixed company (which meant me), but have you seen the Reece’s Pieces commercial? It shows a woman eating chocolate saying ‘Women like it slow but men like it fast.’ It’s chocolate, for Pete’s sake; it’s sexually suggestive.”
On one hand I wondered how the conversation would continue if I weren’t present, and on the other hand I was glad I was there. These were gentlemen who desired to protect their families from an unbalanced view of sex.
The third gentleman, Ned, laughed and asked, “What about the Hardee’s commercial? The one with the girl eating the hamburger? I have been to Hardee’s many times and have never seen a girl undressed eating a hamburger.”
The conversation took me to my nephew, when Mark, some 40 years ago, spent an afternoon with his grandfather. They were watching television after school when Dad changed the channel. In those days you had to get up from the couch and actually change the channel. Mark said the show “The Facts of Life” came on and Dad paused for a moment and said, “I don’t think Grandma would like it if we watched that.” He continued changing the channels to something safer, like soccer in Australia.
Sam had a story to share with Ed, Ted and Ned. The same week, we had gone to a play billed as a comedy about aging; the small sign said “children must be over 12.” The first act, of two, was all about a couple’s 18-year-old daughter who had left school and gone to live in a relationship with two guys, a menage a trois. The girl’s father quoted his daughter as saying she lived for sex. The uncle of the girl said, “Sarah is a beautiful girl with a beautiful body, you can’t expect her to stay a virgin. I’ve always dreamed of a girl like that.”
At intermission I asked Sam, “As a father, how do you feel about the play?”
He responded that he didn’t want to talk about it or think about it, and so we devised a plan and discreetly slipped out the front door and into the night, giggling like teenagers. We boldly stopped at the Shell Service Station and bought chocolate ice cream sandwiches, which we consumed on the way home.
Echoes of my momma’s voice filled my head: “Everyone talks so much about sex you’d think they’d just discovered it.”
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