Oversharing - Part 2

Today, inspired by K’s post on Facebook’s stance on breastfeeding as a photo op, I promised to share another example of too-much-information from the dusty archives of my work past.

(Okay, I promised two examples, but I try to keep these posts under 500 words, so I’m saving one for tomorrow. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I spend upwards of two hours a day perusing blogs. Since I returned to work, crispness is something I’ve learned to appreciate.)

In the late 70’s, a girl in our office attended sex therapy classes with her husband. After every class she’d come in the next morning and give us a play-by-play of what they’d learned.

This was the group that included Stan, who, predictably, made it a point to be out of earshot when the update occurred, and Tom, who, equally predictably, made it a point to listen and poke fun. Not the least because half-a-dozen classes cost something like $1500 (adjusted for inflation, $5000 today).

The content was mostly what you’d think of as common sense – spending more time on foreplay, dealing with ticklishness, getting to know each other’s preferences. What made the whole thing so funny was the innocent zest with which she approached the experience.

“They said to put pillows on the floor and try doing it right in your living room!”

“They said we can take turns controlling how fast or how slow we want to go!”

One day she came in and enumerated the erogenous zones for us. (Had all the erogenous zones even been discovered by the late 1970’s? I know they hadn’t been in my house.)

My favorite recollection is the day she came in, wide-eyed, and told us about a film they’d seen the previous evening on masturbation.

“I think it was Dr. Perkins’ hands in the film,” she said. “I recognized his freckles!”

The hilarious thing was that she completely didn’t seem to absorb the fact that, by extension, this meant that it was also Dr. P’s penis in the film.

I don’t recall what wisecracks Tom made at the time, but I do recall what he had to say three months later, when she announced that she was pregnant.

“Well, looks like it was worth the money,” he said. “At least they know what they’re doing now.”

Tomorrow: A Vasectomy Gone Awry.