Privates and their Functions

     

Little D does not like my husband's "underpants" and by "underpants" she means his penis.  Now, before you get the wrong idea - please understand that we put the nix on any frontal exposure as soon as our children was old enough to understand the difference between boys and girls.  But nonetheless, it doesn't fail that once in a while she will fling open the bathroom door just as he steps out of the shower and immediately start pointing with a look of sheer horror on her face.  This leads to him doing that awkward, hand-cupping of his junk and side-stepping out of the room or to the nearest towel. 

 She recently had such an encounter.  "I no like that!" she screamed.  "I no like your pwivates!"  she spat at him.   And then she came into the room and told me, "I no like Daddy's underpants."  It took me a moment to figure out what she was saying but I got out of it eventually that she had seen his "privates" and was thoroughly disgusted by it.  "Why he's pwivates like dat?" she asks me with a ridiculous amount of concern. 

                            

I can't say I blame her really.  I mean, to be honest, until one comes to maturity and actually realizes the "good" a penis can do, (You know - making babies and such...get out of the gutter!)  it's rather hard to appreciate them based on looks alone.  It's a rather gnarly appendage.   I recently heard of a young girl at a friend's daughter's preschool discussing how her dad's penis is "so gross." (And no, I'm guessing she didn't realize that penis-talk is generally frowned upon at school.)  The damn things are scaring young girls city-wide.  I mean really.   Clearly our husbands need to start showering in jock straps or perhaps a Speedo.  Wouldn't be too tough to lather up their business amongst all that elastic, right?

So now I am approaching some explanations that I am not prepared for.  In addition to this junk-hatred exhibited, she recently asked me some very specific questions about tampons.  A simple, "it's something for when you're older" used to suffice.  That's not good enough anymore.  Now she wants to know "what you do with it" and "why," like, "what's it for?"  Uh, that was not easy.  In fact, I totally botched it.  I said, "Well, it's something you need so you can have babies."  You know, I was thinking about the whole puberty talk from fifth grade where they tell you that having your period helps you have babies.  That was clearly the wrong direction, not to mention totally stupid on my part.  So then she pops her head into the bathroom and says, "So are you trying to have a baby?" 

         

Um, NO.  No, I am not trying to have a baby.  So then I rambled on about how it's not used to have a baby, but you need it because your body does things so if you want to, you can have a baby.  I just couldn't bring myself to tell her that at some point in her life she will begin bleeding from her nether region for days at a time.  I mean, that sounds pretty scary.  What the hell are you supposed to tell a six-year old that won't scare the bajeebies out of her?

So, now I've come to the place in my motherly duty to explain away a man's ugly genitals and the seemingly unfair monthly shedding of a woman's uterine lining.  I suppose I could get sentimental about how they grow up so fast, but let me tell you, I am not weepy.  What comes to mind is more like, "SERIOUSLY?!"  

Photo by @vampiretta