Dirty Joke

Beware, those with delicate sensibilites lest I offend you with my crass post.

Yesterday, the kids spent most of the day in the backyard enjoying our spring-like weather. I was on the phone with a friend of mine when I looked out the window to see my oldest son weilding a garden tool like a light saber. It was a hoe. Naturally, I yelled out the window, "Do not play with the hoe. It's not safe". My friend, Julia, overheard (I was yelling, so it wasn't hard). She quipt, "Be sure to tell him that again at 15".

"Do not play with the hoe." Words to live by and true on so many levels. Never have I spoken more profound words - on accident."

While in the grocery store checkout line I noticed my four year old son checking out a woman on the a magazine cover. She was wearing ample cleavage, a preditory smile and not much else. It occured to me then that this over-sexualized world is going to be a cruel place for my boys to grow up in, especially at 14 or so, when there systems will be so flooded with testosterone that they will hardly be able to think strait.

In junior high and high school I played volleyball. We wore spankies. For those of you unfamiliar with spankies just picture a lycra version of granny underpants and you'll get the general idea. In high school our coach was a retired math teacher, and a lesbian with flamboyant taste. She ordered my sophmore team black spankies with neon splatter paint. They were not subtle; we were not happy. But it never occured to me the image that my team would make to onlooking teen-age boys. In volleyball, the recieving team leans forward (fannies in the air) to receive the served ball. A boy in the stands would see 6 cute little teen-age butts up in the air covered in splatter paint. Distracting to say the least.

Is it too much to hope that Muslim fashion will become trendy by the time my boys are teenagers?

But it's not just teenagers. There is a woman that we know who, for some reason or another, always chooses to wear boob shirts - always a bit of cleavage. I think her she's innocent; she's just is trying to look pretty. The other day I noticed my husband chose to stand next to her to talk to her instead of face her. A little weird maybe, if you didn't understand his intent. He was positioning himself in such a way so as not to look at the distracting bit of flesh somewhat South of her face. He was trying to treat her as a lady and a friend, but she wasn't making it easy. I'm sure she didn't even notice the bit of chivallry she was the recipient of, but I noticed, and I was proud of my husband.

This post sounds like I'm a prude. I'm not. It took me a long, long time to realize what a woman's body does to a heterosexual man. I probably don't get it still. I am a mommy bear when it comes to my children, and I have 2 boys. I know how easy it would be for my boys to get caught up in porn, or illicit sex. I know that it would eat at their souls and hold them captive. And I want more for them, and for my daughters.

I grew up in the church, when it was just becoming a "thing" to talk about abstinance. But I think I was a bit confused. Abstinence is not purity. Purity is something different. Purity is a wholeness, and innocence, and freedom. It is not being polluted by less than the best. That is what I want for my kids.

Apparently, there is a thing out there in high schools called "christian sex". I knew it under a different name: oral sex, or (excuse this) blow jobs. Somehow christian teens have distorted abstinence training into the avoidence of actual intercourse. That's just inane, and its not purity.
Purity sounds so Victorian, and old-fashioned. But I think people do not understand the binding and addictive nature of sex. This can be glue in a marriage - a good thing. But outside of commitment, people are broken and torn and held captive.

Okay, so call me a prude. But, "Do not play with the hoe" is only going to be one of many bits of advice I pass on to my kids about purity.