Grown Ups Do What??

Most parents are fanatical about capturing their child’s milestones… They’ve got their cameras out and ready even before they’ve lit the candles on the cake. Unfortunately that’s not me, I’m usually tearing through my handbag to find my phone at that point, panicking to get it unlocked and focused, then screaming to stop singing and relight the candles.

Strangely, however, when a note from my children's primary school came home about a sex education evening the first thing that went through my mind was - TAKE THE CAMERA!

So this is the exact moment that Tom found out about sex. ‘Grown ups do WHAT??’ he said, as he struggled to comprehend the vulgarity of what he was being told. His virginal innocence was popped before my eyes as blatantly as a teenager’s pimple.

Poor Tom, he was pure as the driven snow prior to that moment. He had no idea about conception other than scientific details, we’d talked about bodies in great detail of course, sperms and eggs, chromosomes and DNA. We’d talked a lot about biology, but never about mechanics. He’d seen me and my husband naked many times, but never together.

Thankfully I never saw my parents together either, unfortunately for me it was the other way round - but I’ll get back to that story...

I nearly laughed myself stupid when a friend recently told me she’d been caught in the act by her youngest. She was so embarrassed she was actually whispering into the phone. I could picture her, standing in a corner, cupping her hand around the phone, turning a deeper shade of crimson as I dragged the details out of her... The little face appearing at the doorway, the awkward untangling of limbs and then the words as she tried to take charge of the situation ‘Don’t worry! Mummy’s not in pain Darling!’

Snort!

Ah yes, the inexorable end of innocence… 

And so yes, here's the story of my own loss of innocence, or rather, my father's - impatient pervey blog readers that you are.

When I was about fifteen I was home sick from school, I did suffer a lot with tonsillitis but on this occasion I mustn’t have felt too unwell because I had snuck my boyfriend up into my bedroom. Somehow, we didn't hear my father on the stairs, we didn't hear a thing until the door opened and in that moment sheer, undiluted terror sliced through us both like an ice cold filleting knife. My boyfriend plunged down under the covers and I did my best impersonation of a person suffering with narcolepsy.

In the dim light my father came over and sat on the edge of the bed. 

“Are you alright Kate?” he asked. He put his hand on my forehead, “Oh, you’re awfully hot,” he said, “and clammy. You must have a temperature!” He tried to pull the covers back to cool me down. I tried murmuring I was asleep and to leave me alone, but there was no stopping the disaster that was about to unfold, the horrifying calamity that had been set in motion from the minute the bedroom door opened.

His hand found my naked shoulder. 

“Where are your pajamas?” he asked dumbly. My heart was beating so hard I thought it would burst out of my chest like the creature in Alien. But it wasn’t my heart that burst, it was my naked boyfriend, who had scurried as far down the bed as he could before falling out the bottom dragging the covers off with him. He made a break for the door. My father screamed and also ran. And I was left alone, naked and trembling like a leaf, wishing the floor would open up and swallow me whole.


So, your turn: TRUTH OR DARE! 
Have you ever caught anyone in the act, or been caught yourself?