ANOTHER DAY - ANOTHER BATTLE (S)
Margaret Pearce
"Mum! I've got problems!"
He slouched in gloomily, throwing his school bag down with a thump, and sprawled on the chair.
I kept a sharp eye on the plate of cakes I had just finished icing. "Haven't we all?"
He swallowed two cakes and sighed heavily. "It's about my education."
They had been having lectures on jobs and careers that week. Perhaps I was going to hear something positive.
"Well?" I prompted as I shifted the cakes out of danger.
He reached his long arm over for another cake and munched thoughtfully.
"It's about sex!"
I shifted the cakes further out of reach.
"Discuss it with your father."
"I can't discuss anything with Dad."
I thought that statement over. For once, he was right! These days their conversations seemed to be limited to saying good bye to each other's departing back.
"I thought you learned all that sort of thing at school?"
"Oh yeah! I've been discussing it with the gang. At school all the teachers assume you are taught at home, and at home all the parents assume the teachers get around to it."
"I thought you knew all about biology?" I was puzzled. His marks were always satisfactory.
"It's not the biology, it's just - relationships."
"I hope you are not letting yourself get dragged behind the bushes by some of those high school brats in the name of education?"
I was suddenly suspicious and unsympathetic. Some of the teenagers in our locality were enthusiastically amoral by our more square adult standards, and occasionally the whole district resounded to scandal.
"I would struggle, kicking and screaming all the way," he said wistfully.
I flapped the tablecloth over the table and braced myself. "Just exactly what do you want to know?"
"Must be books on the subject, Mum?"
I relaxed. This was an easier solution than I had been expecting. Of course there were books on the subject! How much easier it made life to be literate.
The next day I got directed into the right department, and spent my precious lunch hour in an agony of indecision.
I'll say there were books on the subject! Even narrowed down to the correct age group, there were still volumes and volumes, all purporting to tell the right and correct things about relationships, sex and budgeting.
I kept browsing. Some were written in an arch twee manner; some were very moral, and some were patronising, while others bogged down in a welter of sticky sentimentality. Some books were odiously righteous, and would have made suitable reading to mentally retarded children by simple-minded spinsters.
In desperation I picked two books that looked reasonably adult and sensible. One was on psychological relationships with teens, and the other on sex and the single student. covered them in brown paper, and handed them over.
They were accepted graciously, and the dread subject dropped its ugly head for a few days.
"Aren't there other books, Mum?"
"Did you happen by any chance to want the 'Karma Sutra', or perhaps something on the techniques on love-making?" I asked, trying sarcasm to get him to drop the subject.
"That's it, Mum - just what I want!" His face brightened up at my sudden ability to home in on his wavelength!
"At sixteen," I snarled, not at all flattered. "That knowledge shouldn't be indispensable."
"Well, you're neglecting my education," he said gloomily. "I've been talking with the fellas, and someone said there are thirty-four positions."
I glared at him, and tried not to let my bottom jaw drop.
He didn't notice. He had an aggrieved tone to his voice. "And we can all only work out twenty-two!"
(c) Margaret Pearce
