Dear Roger: Its All About Sex

Today was grocery shopping day, so I got the younger boys headed off to school, went and did my job a for a bit and then I came home, gathered up my eldest son and youngest daughter and we began walking to the grocery store. Its a good 2 mile walk, but considering it was a rare sunshiney day, we didn't mind, in fact we really enjoyed being out in the sun and fresh air for the first time in months and months.
We took a quick break and stopped at McRaes for french fries with gravy and lots of katsup as well as some iced tea, and while we were there my son noticed I was looking at a cute guy that was sitting in the corner of the restaurant. We had actually been making fairly regular eye contact and occasionally smiling at each other, and it really seemed to disturb my son. He got irritated at me for not paying attention to his talk about the lack of adequate sports teams in Portland and the constant rain, in order to stare at the cute man.
"Mom! Pay attention! I swear to God all you think about is sex anymore!" He was referring to the fact he had caught me writing a sex scene last night for one my stories. I don't usually write very graphic scenes, but it was very R  almost NC-17 rated and its actually pretty hard to write that kind of stuff with kids wandering around talking to you.
He started complaining that everything seemed to be wrapped up in sex. I explained to him that next to money, it was the most powerful driving force in the world. People make life changing decisions over sex, destroy friendships, business partnerships, lives and marriages, even themselves for it. A few moments ecstasy can cost a lifetime of misery or it can be a "For the Win" gain, it all depends on how you play the game. My daughter was not paying attention to our conversation, as she was jogging ahead and talking to her monkey  after we left the restaurant, so we weren't scarring her ears with our topic of discussion, but it is something she is well aware of, as it is all around her. Sex is everywhere in our culture, even aimed at young kids, and she is remarkably adept at picking up on the subtle cues and even the double entendres that I thought went over her head. She has even commented a few times about certain songs or singers that she knows they are for,"Adults" and that she has to cover her ears and leave the room when she hears the opening chords of certain songs because she knows what is coming is not approved for her to hear.
I do try to shield my kids from some of it, but I am also very much into making sure they understand the reality of what its all about. My eldest son has had the,'Safe Sex" talk in both the straight and gay version and maybe that is why he says he is waiting for marriage or that he may never? I talk to my daughter about the fact that she doesn't need a man to be a strong and powerful woman. She has seen that a man can be more of a burden than an asset, and she knows in spades that men can be unreliable, untrustworthy and will forget you in a heartbeat, so she is learning to do the same. Maybe its harsh, but I don't want her to have to count on anyone, so I brutally honest with her about everything and I am preparing her to be a leader. She is already worked more than two weeks ahead in her schoolwork, is pushing to get her French lessons going faster and is writing her own story and she is teaching herself,"Smoke on The Water" on the piano by ear. She is fierce and brave and tough and she is also learning to watch other women so she knows how to walk and act like a lady. At this point, she sees boys as pretty useless and helpless and I dont mind if she continues to have that attitude for the rest of her life if it makes her powerful.
Her brother is not thrilled with that but he has not been the best at proving to her any different, especially when he does things like abandon the family all day on a holiday to be with his girlfriend. Its okay, I understand, but his little sister doesn't and to her it was just another example of a man who is unreliable and only following his pecker.
My son and I talked about a lot of things on our walk, including why some women make the decisions they do to date the men they do, and that on really drove him crazy. I told him about how when I was in college I had dated a really nice guy, a Dallas, rich boy, prep school kid who was headed into the family business and who was steady, reliable, sane, (as a rich kid could be), and he had a lot to offer me. We had a great time together and we dated for over a year, and I really liked him and he really liked me, my parents really liked him too. I dumped him.  I dumped him for a mercurial, temperamental, good-looking, jock who barely had two dimes to rub together and who my parents couldn't stand. It was a horrible break-up and I wasn't even nice about it, I broke his heart and it one of my biggest regrets. My son was shocked because he knows I always do my best to not hurt anyone, but as I told him the rest of the story I explained I was 19, stupid and shallow and not even thinking of what life would be like in the future. Now I am one who believes that no one should make life altering decisions until they are 30, but then hindsight is 20/20 and I hope that by giving him a view of what I had done in the past, I can help his future and prepare him for the insanity that is dealing with young adult women.