Sex with Ed Sullivan

Warning: This post contains sexual content, so if you're a child reading this, and your parents haven't told you the story about the plug and the electrical outlet yet, turn away. It's gonna get naughty.

Once upon a time oh so long ago, when I was living on the farm with my first husband, J.J., his every-other-weekend daughters, six-year-old Amy and eight-year-old Stacia, and our son, Jason, I took it upon myself to tell my step-daughters how babies are made.  Well, I thought they should know, and I didn't want to tell them the silly stork story like my mother had told me, or have them learn the hard way like I had, so I searched the house for the perfect tools to use in my "show and tell" sex education class.

"Come here, girls.  I have something I want to show you," I said as they ran screaming by me and jumped on the waterbed that filled the front room of our old farmhouse.  Their seventeen-month-old monster brother was chasing after them growling like a fierce bear cub.

"Girls!  Got something interesting to show you,"  I said again.  They ignored me and jumped off the bed, still screaming.  Jason fell on top of them.  Then all three took off running toward the kitchen.

"IT'S ABOUT HOW BABIES ARE MADE!" I yelled after them.  Three seconds later the girls were sitting next to me, one on each side.  Jason was still a big bad bear, but they didn't care and ignored him.

BACK TO 1957

By the time I was twelve I knew Mother had lied about the flying bird delivering babies in a sling.  Well, come on now. Really?  That makes no sense.  I was pretty sure that the woman's belly button opened up and out plopped the baby.  I suspected there was a man involved in the making of a baby, but I had no idea what part he played.  I knew his part did not involve seeing a woman naked, though, because in our house of four females, our bodies had to be covered at all times.  Being naked in front of another person, even a family member of the same gender, was a very bad thing.  It was a sin that could possibly send the offender to H E double L.

A few years before, when I was nine, Hazel had moved us to Irvington, a community of modest single-family homes six miles east of Monument Circle, and within a few weeks, Judy and I had become friends with Margaret, a girl who lived four houses away.  Her mother had told us that she had a seventeen-year-old body, but her mind was closer to my age.  Margaret and I became close friends and we spent a lot of time together at her house playing checkers and watching television from her big four poster bed.

One Sunday night, while Margaret was beating me at checkers, she informed me that a friend would be joining us later to watch The Ed Sullivan Show, so when twenty-something Howie showed up at her bedroom door, I was uncomfortable but not sure why.  Her mother seemed to think it was okay for Howie to share the bed with us while we watched television, so I figured my uneasiness was unwarranted.

While Margaret and Howie propped up pillows and leaned back against the headboard, I took my pillow and moved to the foot of the bed with my back to them.  When they started giggling, I wondered what they found so funny about the commercial.  Then the lights went out.  Loud slurpy lip-smacking noises followed.  "Oh, my goodness! What is that? Is that kissing?"  I laid perfectly still, paralyzed.  I felt the bed start to move. Then Margaret was leaning over me.  I closed my left eye, the only one she could see from her angle.   "It's okay, Howie," she said.  "She's asleep."  But I was very much awake.

Remember the part about me not knowing how babies were made? Neither did Margaret and Howie.  (I found out later that Howie's body was in its twenties, but his mind was younger than mine.)  So now there were three of us on the four poster bed who had no clue what to do.  Two trying desperately to figure it out; one trying to figure out how to escape the nasty naughty that was consuming the room.

I yawned and stretched to make them think I was waking up, but in the heat of the moment, they didn't notice.  Since I was asleep, they felt it would be okay to use every inch of the bedroom to get the job done.  Then they are between me and Ed Sullivan.  Oh yuck!  Two naked bodies saying things like, "I can't find it," and "Where does this go?"  I'm not making this up.  This really happened.

The next day my mother called Margaret's mother, and Margaret and I never saw each other again.  No more checkers, no more television in bed, no more sex with Ed Sullivan.

RETURN TO 1982

In one hand I was holding an electrical plug.  "This is the male," I said while Jason began smacking Amy and Stacia on the back of their heads with a Tonka truck.  "And this," I said while pointing to the outlet, "is the female."  I put the plug into the outlet and said, "And that is how babies are made."  

"Oh, okay." They said.  Then they were gone; chasing their baby brother through the house.  I thought I was saving them from the trauma of finding out about the nasty naughty on their own.  I thought they would thank me later.  They never did.