Childhood

When I was in fourth grade, I remember my parents had to sign a permission script for sex education class. This was a time when they had the one male teacher in the school take all the boys in one room, then send all the girls to another room, and they showed us a video that would supposedly answer all the questions none of us even had.

I would like to describe that video.

It began with a documentary about flowers and showed a bee buzzing around in a flower, then explaining how the bee flies to another flower to fertilize it.

Following this was a great cartoon about how fish reproduce. It began by showing the female fish. I knew she was a female fish because she had a Ms. Pac-Man bow in her scales. This fish swam by and shit out a pile of round bubbles on the floor of the pond. Then a male fish came by and casually pissed all over these shit bubbles. Then lots of tiny fish swam out of the shit.

I don’t remember what happened next, but I recall it cut to a baby sucking on a woman’s breast, and then the video ended. This, at least, was the video the boys were shown. To this day I have difficulty imagining what went on in the girls’ class–especially given how notorious our school district later became for general sluttiness. Perhaps it was Logjammin’.

Why I thought of this today while riding in a taxi and looking at all the street names ending in 寺 and 村 and imagining how 100 years ago, these may have actually had some relation to what was on these streets, is beyond me. But one thing is certain. That fish video fucked with an entire generation.

I don’t think you need to look any further than PortalOfEvil, Rotten.com or The Stile Project to see what I’m talking about.

I am certain that video of a fish pissing all over a bunch of unattended shit bubbles is the explanation for why watersports is so big among modern couples.

If you have that fish video, please upload it to YouTube.

Addendum: We had a second bout of sex education in my high school years–this time an entire semester on Sex & Love taught in a Catholic school. Yeah. No, I’m not kidding.

I will remember the class forever for three reasons:

• When discussing STDs, one of the girls in the class shouted out proudly, “I have herpes!!!”
• When allowed to ask questions, one of the girls asked, “Is it possible for my boyfriend to pee in my vagaina?”

Clearly, someone besides myself had seen the fish video.