As we wait for Hurricane Irene to lash New England with the worst storm felt in decades!  (you can tell the Weather Channel has crossed all its fingers and toes for just that outcome), a moment to pause and reflect on how amazing it is that 8-year-old A. has not yet fully awakened to the reality of the birds and the bees…despite the world’s best efforts.

Come on up and see me sometime, sailor

Last week we were with Amy’s parents and the Carol Wright Gift catalog arrived in the mail. If you haven’t had to shop for intimate apparel for obese, infirm, or incontinent people, or handy reach-and-grab devices for a semi-homebound relative, or if you are not from the Midwest, you may not have heard of the Carol Wright catalog. Imagine if you will the people depicted in the Land’s End catalog, moved ahead about 30-50 years in age and in somewhat reduced circumstances, and you’ll have what I (from my Acela Corridor bastion of snobbery and cloistered elitism) imagine is the target demographic for Carol Wright.

The catalog allows Amy’s mom to shop for pants that fit her 90+ year old mother, our kids’ beloved “GG” (Great-grandma), who is doing great in assisted living. Inquisitive A. picked up the catalog and, not deterred by the cover’s mixture of bras, sink strainers, and egg peelers, read right through it. Afterwards, when she was alone with Amy, she said, “Mom, I was looking at this magazine that Grandma had and I saw these really weird things that people use to ‘make people attracted to them.’ There are these things that look like penises that people rub on their bodies, and this other thing called ‘The Rabbit Ring’ that has tentacles coming off it that you’re supposed to rub on the other person’s body, and there’s this cream you rub on yourself to make people come near you. Why would Grandma have a magazine like that?” She brought us the catalog out of the recycling, and you can imagine our surprise to find that right after the three-piece toilet seat cover/bathmat ensemble, there were a few pages devoted to sex aids. That’s right, hot pink dildos, multi-function ticklers, vibrating penis rings, and (knowing their audience) a “Totally Nude Aerobics” DVD.

We had a big laugh as we talked about how silly it was that the magazine Grandma received to find pants for GG (really!) had these other things, and that there are lots of different kinds of people out there, and how strange it was to find these ads, and that we should really ask Grandma about them. Grandma had never gotten past the page with pretty, functional pants for 90-year-olds and was slightly hysterical with mortified giggles and apologies at having exposed A. to this side of the human experience.

It turns out we are not the only parents who have been Shocked! Shocked! that such advanced material can sneak into the house within the Trojan Slimming Girdle of the Carol Wright Gift catalog. And yet, despite encountering the weird sh*t that people turn, of all places, to the Carol Wright Gift catalog to find, so far A. has not connected the dots. What are the other dots? Just in the last few weeks, a friend of hers happened to receive a very well-intentioned book about your changing body, which triggered intense sensitivity and awareness in A. about real or perceived chest development, and deeply freaked her out with graphic line drawings of how to insert a tampon. And then this week she read aloud to Amy from her wild animals book about how amazing it was that the male web-footed gecko’s “stick” has a hole, and he sticks it inside the female gecko and the sperm and eggs make baby geckos! And if the stick gets bitten off by another animal, it can grow back! Amy just said, “Wow, that is so cool!”

So a gasping sigh of relief that, at least until the earthquakes and hurricanes are over, we don’t yet have to have The Talk. But school starts soon…