Monday, June 2, 2008
Sucky Advice
It is not everyday that I get new birth control advice. It is rarer still when that advice comes from my mother. To my mother’s credit, she has always tried to maintain a dialogue with me about sex. When I was in sixth grade and walked into the kitchen wearing my brand new piña colada lip gloss my mom shocked the pants off of me by informing me that I looked like I’d just given someone a blow job. Moooooom!!! When I was fifteen, and she began to suspect that I had presented my virginity to my skateboarding boyfriend, she asked me if we ought to install mirrors on my ceiling. Again with the, “Mooooom!!!!”
While each “sex talk” my mom and I had left the adolescent me red-faced and mortified, I am thankful that my mother continued talking. My mom wanted me to have a different experience than she had had growing up. She explained how my grandmother’s knuckles grew white and her face stern when she attempted to pass along vague knowledge of the carnal to my mother. I can’t imagine what it might have been like to grow up in a home where I was deprived of information, even though I often felt my mother was giving me too much of it (“TMI, Mooooom!”).
Today I had a chat with my mother. We talked about the Bar Mitzvah of my first cousin once removed. We talked about movies and plane rides and my friends from high school. And then, when I wasn’t expecting it, my mom shared the birth control secret that is, if true, the dream of every man.
My mom explained to me that, in homeopathic medicine, ailments are treated by minute doses of substances that normally produce like ailments in a healthy person. For example, belladonna, which can cause dry throats and flushing (not to mention death), is prescribed by homeopaths, in a very dilute form, to treat those same symptoms (except for the death-thingy… I don’t think they have that one worked out yet). Using this theory, my mom went on to explain how a colleague of hers saw a connection between swallowing semen and decreased female fertility. This colleague (he was, of course male) suggested that the diluted seaman that made its way through a woman’s digestive system fought off the cute little spermies trying to fertilize her eggs. Ha!
Can you imagine? “Honey, I have the answer! Throw away your pills today! No shots either, at least not in the arm. I have a magical elixir, and all you have to do is swallow it, and you won’t get pregnant. Don’t worry, it’s natural. I brew it myself. I have been saving some up, just for you. We’ll save loads of money on condoms!”
As my mother and I giggled about the soundness of such advice and the male who might have thought it up, visions of piña colada lip gloss danced through my head. Over the years my mom has suggested many a remedy, each taken (and given) with a grain of salt. My husband has often balked at her suggestions. I think this is the first time ever that he might be sad that I don’t believe in homeopathy. I am not quite ready to swallow this one.Labels: rant
tidbit posted by Mosa @ 5:03 PM
