Much Ado about Sex
By: Glory Fink
SEX!
Where did you first hear that word?
What did you think it meant?
Were you right…?
This word, sex, has fascinated me since I was a child. I have been simultaneously mesmerized, titillated and amused by this one, little, three-letter word, since I can remember. Somewhere I heard it, but there was no explanation with it. Therefore, I invented my own. Asking adults what sex meant only got me in trouble because it was a “bad word”. However, now I knew a real, “bad word”. Like most kids desperate to grow up, I pursued the knowledge of words that were so heinous they couldn’t be repeated without getting me grounded, a task harder than any subject I ever studied in school.
When I was seven, there was a certain boy I liked in class. He was sweet but very shy. I wanted him to notice me but he didn’t. Perhaps he was merely concerned about the spread of cooties. One lunch period in a fit of frustration, I said very loudly to him, “Chad, if you don’t pay attention to me, I’m going to sex you up!” Suddenly, a hush fell over the entire lunchroom. Sandwiches hung in mid-air and a dark horror blanketed the cafeteria. My uptight, prim teacher sitting at the opposite end of our lunch table, gazed over the entire length of the table and found my appalled face turning an embarrassingly, devilish red. “Glory” she said in a calm, commanding voice while motioning me with her Finger of Doom to come to her. I walked my Green Mile while envisioning horrors worse than any that had ever been perpetrated on a second grader in the history of mankind. My teacher would call my parents and tell them of my crime against humanity. They would disown me. I would be homeless and have to live in a cardboard box with rats like on “Hill Street Blues”. All this because of one little word and one heartthrob of a little boy. And, oh yes, my big mouth!
Mrs. Long asked what I had just said. Choking on fear and peanut butter, I repeated my words. She asked where I had heard that word. Thinking of all the rats in my soon-to-be cardboard house, I shrugged my shoulders while saying, “I don’t knooooow….”
“Never let me hear you say that word again,” was all Mrs. Long replied.
I returned to my seat and wondered what my cursed future held. Where would I find a refrigerator box? What would I name the rats who would be my only friends? Would my mother ever visit me? For weeks, I waited for my parents to get the dreaded call from my teacher. It never came.
At the age of nine, I learned what the word actually meant with the aid of a dictionary in a hidden corner of the library. Of course, I discussed the subject with my friends at sleepovers, which were made for such things, but I never said that word again until I was much older. By that time I felt sure I could avoid the Devil as well as The Penalty of Death that surely came to children who ventured too far off the path and into the valley of forbidden words.
Comments, suggestions and feedback are always appreciated. Send your emails to glory@askglory.com with “Attention: Glory” in the subject line.
