MY BLOOD ran cold when my wife said, "You’re going to have the chat with your son soon." Not ‘a’ chat, but, ‘the’ chat. Surely not! I mean, he’s only 11. Seemingly, puberty is happening younger and younger these days. I’m sure I was at least 14 before it began for me, though the wife would argue I’m still going through it.
But what to do? I know there was no fatherly chat in my day; no, for my generation, sex was a mystery up there with the Bermuda Triangle and Holy Trinity.
My introduction came in my first few days of secondary school when two older boys selflessly decided to enlighten me about the birds and the bees. With one either side, we marched around the Gaelic pitch as they explained the whole messy business in excruciating detail. Of course, the two boyos were as much in the dark as I was, as I’ve never heard of a shoe horn being involved in giving birth.
When they finally stopped with, "And then the doctor slaps yer a**e", I stood stunned, mouth open and wide-eyed. All I could say was, "Aye, right; maybe your daddies and mammies do, but my mammy and daddy are good Catholics’.
Going to a Catholic school didn’t help. Occasionally, we’d hear a rumour that someone was going to give us ‘the talk’ but, of course, it never happened. The bigger boys reported their biology textbooks had pictures and we fell for it, signing up for biology in prodigious numbers. I still think that’s why so many Catholic boys become doctors.
We sat, bored, for a year, learning about plant photosynthesis and capillary action, comforting ourselves that next year all would be revealed, when finally, we’d move on to human procreation.
It was with near hysteria that we picked up our year two biology textbooks, stifling giggles when Brother Murphy suggested we take a skim through the book for next week. The man had no idea – for us, Christmas had just arrived early.
Once home, I took the stairs in one bound and with great reverence, removed the sacred book from my school bag. I didn’t need to search too hard; the book had been so well-thumbed, it fell open to the ‘special’ page as if by magic. And there it was, two line drawings of headless and limbless torsos, exhibiting all the erotica of a shoulder of ham. To this day, I’ve no doubt committees of frustrated clerics spent hours ensuring no scintilla of joy could be elicited from this publication; the disappointment still stings.
The rest of my school days were spent staring longingly as the girls from our sister school, Little Flower, walked past our classroom on their way home. The powers that be staggered school ending time, ensuring the girls were already home before us hallions were set loose.
Not that anyone would dare tackle a Little Flower girl, known as they were as ferocious fighters who’d left more than one cheeky chap both battered and trouser-less after he’d the temerity to try and chat them up. No, for us the forbidden fruit were Protestant girls – tales of these exotic and unattainable creatures took on mythic proportions, probably because none of us knew anyone who’d ever talked to one.
As a gauche teenager I attended discos but discovered, to my horror, that I was congenitally incapable of either dancing with, or talking to, the opposite sex – these were not happy years.
I was a sensitive little soul and the thought of walking the green mile to ask a girl to dance, only to face possible rejection, froze me into inaction. I watched one particular friend with amazement – he would fearlessly approach a table of girls and ask them in sequence until one said yes to a dance. I thought him an idiot to suffer such humiliation but years later realised he always went home with a girl while I invariably left only with a hangover.
Thankfully, to my utter astonishment, a girl eventually asked me out. Without this selfless act of kindness there’s every chance I’d now be known as Brother O’Kane, handing out biology textbooks to excitable young men.
But back to the problem at hand and an 11-year-old inquisitive about the next stage of his development. There’s nothing for it, I’ll have to man up, take my courage in my hands, and climb into the attic and retrieve that old biology textbook.
