The Blind Leading The Blind, Part One: The Birds And The Bees.

Usually on Sunday I make a list in my head of all the things I need to get done during the following week. I find this works better than writing them down, since the less important tasks just naturally fall away into the recesses of my atrophying brain, while the most important one will stay in my consciousness, screaming its importance while it torments me and keeps me up at night. I've got a doozie for this week, and all those other lesser things on my list, like helping the homeless, learning Spanish and bathing will have to wait.

Because this week I'm going to have The Talk with Kira.

You know the one. The serious, long-winded speech that covers not only sex, but babies, menstruation, a brief anatomy lesson, body changes and appropriate and inappropriate behavior. (Oh, and if I have time - blogging, commenting, positioning of the sidebar and the social implications of a blogroll.)

And I'm dreading it. Because I absolutely suck when it comes to teaching of any kind. No matter what my knowledge is on a given subject, when it comes to imparting that knowledge to another human being I am completely useless:

Person Seeking Knowledge: Mom, how does the TV work?

Me: Oh, um, the TV station is sending a signal through the cable thingy.

PSK: And how does the sound get here?

Me: That's coming from the little people living inside the TV.

I don't remember my parents having The Talk with me. Since there were five kids, they probably figured they would just have to explain things to my oldest brother and everything would filter on down to the rest of us. Sort of like that 'telephone' game we all played in kindergarten where the first kid would whisper, "Twinkle twinkle little star" to the one next to him and by the time it had been whispered into the wax-filled ear of the twentieth kid in class it would come out as, "Tony Danza ate his car."

Being the youngest, this may explain why most information was tragically compromised by the time it reached me, and why I vaguely remember hushed conversations oddly revolving around the words peanuts and angina. It may also be the reason why, all these years later, any talk of sex will bring on suffocating chest pains and a craving for a bowl of salty Planters.

So I've been wondering about the best way to approach my little discussion with Kira. Since I'm a big fan of visual aids, I'm thinking that some life-size diagrams of the human body would be helpful, along with a slideshow accompanied by her favorite band, Green Day (...I hope you have the tiiime of your liiife...) And here's where it gets really fun - after that intro, I could get out some of those plastic models of reproductive organs from the medical supply store and use them to act out different scenarios. Oh, and I definitely need one of those laser pointers - they're useful for emphasizing things and also make awesome light shows if anyone starts to get bored.

Or, better yet, maybe I should just skip The Talk altogether and she can get her information from YouTube like every other normal kid.

Holy crap, what is wrong with me?

Why can't I be like the moms in those teary Afterschool Specials, the ones that authoritatively, but oh-so-lovingly, explain the facts of life to their fresh-faced daughters, while sipping tea and wearing homely sweater vests? Who would never dream of using words like woowoo or Mr. Peter or of using pantomime or sock puppets to give their children life lessons? Chances are when I'm done talking, Kira will pat my hand, look me straight in the eyes and say, "Mom, that was a lovely talk. Now please take off that hideous tampon costume and get dad in here."

So wish me luck. What I'm hoping is to have an open, honest conversation with her that will ensure that she's comfortable with who she is and the changes that will be happening to her body. I'm hoping that I'll be able to supply her with at least a quarter of the information she'll need to make good decisions. But most of all, I'm hoping that she doesn't go to school the next day, gather her girlfriends around and say, "So, my mom gave me The Talk. And the weirdest part? Tony Danza ate his car."

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