My Open Letter To My Maine Sex-Ed Teacher in Elementary School
Let's all take a minute to travel back to a time and place where TikTok didn't exist. Where Sabrina the Teenage Witch was boss and I was "Scary Spice", if you know, you know.
I was spring cleaning my house recently and came upon my old year books and that sparked some old memories for me. It brought me all the way back to Montello Elementary school. Sex-ed class to be specific.
Let me try to create the memory for you:
Picture this: a young, awkward, and overly dramatic 9-year-old girl sitting in class when a new teacher waltzes in and drops the bombshell announcement.
It went a little something like this,
Brace yourself, kids, because we're about to dive into the mysteries of the human body, the birds and the bees, and all that good stuff.
Okay, maybe the order's a bit fuzzy since it's been a solid quarter century, but you get the idea, right? I'm old.
In the words of Salt n' Pepa, "Let's talk about sex, baby."
In a split second, our faces transformed into a rainbow of 17 different shades of red.
Our teacher decided to bless us with the most cringeworthy and revolting 80s video about the human body.
We saw every nook and cranny of ourselves on screen, and it was bad enough already. But wait, there's more - what happened next took things to a whole new level of awkwardness.
She went around the room and asked each of us to name our private parts.
Dear Sex-Ed Teacher,
Remember that time in class when you put me on the spot and asked me to name some male and female private parts? Yeah, about that...I froze up and couldn't recall anything. So, I did what any quick-witted Greek kid would do - I proudly blurted out "Poupi!" Because that's what my ancestors called it.
But of course, that wasn't good enough for you, was it? We went back and forth like a tennis match, with you insisting on proper anatomical terms and me stubbornly sticking to my cultural lingo. I mean, who needs "penis" or "vagina" when you have "Poupi," am I right?
I still don't know why I was reminiscing about this, but I figured I'd drop you a line and say hi. Hope all is well in the world of sex-ed these days!
Cheers, Your former resistent student